Forum bans people randomly

[wtfwtf]

With a subject line like that I'm surprised you've gotten so much help. You might want to actually read the responses and accept them as fact.

i'm not looking for sympathy, i'm looking for a solution to a problem.
the title was intentionally chosen to get response

[Steve]

i'm not looking for sympathy

And I wasn't trying to give you any. Quite the opposite in fact.

Courteous requests for help work better than slanderous, untruthful, and disrespectful declarations and demands.

[SaltedWeb]

Also around since 2005 and hmm can't think of anything ever and I would calculate I built about 35 of these suckers
for myself and others and never a ban issues, makes me wonder if this is on a server trigger of some kind as well.
Do you have any blocks setup on your server for certain conditions ?

[Westwegoman]

Subject titles like that definitely come across as being negative. As a past user of YaBB who converted to SMF sometime around 2012, I can also tell you that I have never experienced that problem. I would have to agree that it's somethibg on your end, possibly with your host, that's causing the problem. I currently have several forums running on SMF without the issues you speak of.

Good luck. Hope you solve your issue. If you do, you will find that SMF is great to work with and support is top notch!

[aegersz]

SM forum is sweet. troll ?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

So, did you look at the triggers?

If they appear in the ban log, then they must have hit a trigger.

If you look at Admin -> Members -> Ban List -> Browse ban triggers

Is there any trigger that seems to have an unusual amount of hits?
Are there any triggers that use wildcards?

[ninik]

I am going to make a wild guess here (being the most inexperienced of all of you guys around)...

IP!!!

Meaning that one-way or another, when he/she banned something, or did set up triggers, he/she used IP as a trigger; hence, everything from that IP (or the IPs) gets banned.

The other thing that pops in mind is email triggers...

i.e. something like that: *@gmail.com (if I typed it wrong please correct me guys)...

These are the only two things that come to my mind, which could actually cause "mass-banning" and may appear to him/her as random ban of his/her members...

Over and out!

[aegersz]

IF this guy is for real then i can't see why SMF would do that so the only thing that remains, aside from host issues  because i don't know anything about hosts, is .htaccess (IF you use Linux).

so if you (OP) ever come back then please check or publish it.

but why doesn't this guy reply ? (that seems a bit, you know ...)

... because SMF auto-randomly banned him from here too ? [i jest]

[SaltedWeb]

Being the thread has not been responded by him/her even though they have logged on  just yesterday.
One has to think this was just trolling, as lots of good advice was given and not a response, my spider sense tells
me why the issues maybe are true, but me thinks something else...

[ninik]

aegersz,

question: can "messing" with the .htaccess actually ban users from your forum (as suggested by the OP)?

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

No, I don't think htaccess can cause what the OP is describing.
htaccess can cause trouble and block people, but they would not reach SMF banning logic then at all I think.

Now, if the OP would respond back we could continue this discussion, otherwise - I'd kindly ask people to just let this topic die on it's own.
Seems like a waste of time and effort at this point.

[ninik]

OK...

thanks Aleksi...

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

No problem.

[aegersz]

you are correct, he says that SMF reports them as banned, i didn't read carefully enough.

he should setup a cloned DB, freshly installed system in a subdirectory and try it or just a new system with a fresh db and mass compare sources.

or he could unload his live DB and look for the ban tables to see what's going on.

i still can't imagine what could be wrong but a cloned system would be ideal as he could reinstall the mods, one by one and test it each time.

the OP has many options available if he has the time and skills.

if he is for real then he may allow someone to access his forum as admin as well as phpmyadmin ... that may be risky or a step too far, of course

[GigaWatt]

I am going to make a wild guess here (being the most inexperienced of all of you guys around)...

IP!!!

Also my first guess . I haven't checked the "Ban by IP" settings in SMF, but I guess it should have a "Ban by IP range" (CIDR notation most likely) section... or as some of you pointed out, a wildcard option.

If not that, a hosting issue...

question: can "messing" with the .htaccess actually ban users from your forum (as suggested by the OP)?

No, it just blocks http access to a certain directory in your webspace. If it's the root of your forum, your browser wouldn't load the page... simple.

[Steve]

Now, if the OP would respond back we could continue this discussion, otherwise - I'd kindly ask people to just let this topic die on it's own.
Seems like a waste of time and effort at this point.

[wtfwtf]

Request change of title and lock of this post
I have strong reasons to believe it was my fault, precisely a couple ips of very fertile spammers were blocked, and probably they use a xrummer software that uses proxy. since these ips were unblocked haven't heard of any case.
thus i can assume this was my fault.
and it would be unfair to keep such a title.

[Shambles]

Apology accepted

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

Thank you.
I at least personally appreciate the gesture. I hope you have learned something from this too.

Will mark the topic solved, but for now I see no real reason to edit or lock this - issue has been identified, and corrected.