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went to forum and all members have been banned

Started by Illhaveanother, March 10, 2019, 07:54:37 PM

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Illhaveanother

I belong to a site where I got the message sorry guest you have been banned from using the forum when I logged in. It seems all members have been banned. The guy who set it up hasn't done much to maintain it since he set it up back in 03ish.  It is a very old version of Simple Machines. He had mods taking care of trolls and he occasionally dropped in to do some maintenance. He posted that he did not know what happened and would try to look into it.
The website the forum is a part of is fine.
I guess I want to ask how this could happen and how it might be corrected.

vbgamer45

It could be bans based on hostname or ip address. Clearing those bans might help.
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Illhaveanother

Quote from: vbgamer45 on March 10, 2019, 08:23:31 PM
It could be bans based on hostname or ip address. Clearing those bans might help.
Thank You
He, the owner, said that all members had been banned. We have members from all over the world.

vbgamer45

Clear the ban tables from the smf database if he has no access.
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Illhaveanother

Quote from: vbgamer45 on March 10, 2019, 09:50:32 PM
Clear the ban tables from the smf database if he has no access.

He must have access of some kind as he is still posting in the nonforum area of the site and removed the "forum" link to stop getting error messages when folks tried to login, but I will pass on your advice. That may not be a desirable choice as the mods have said there are a lot of trolls banned which makes it hard, slow to ban new ones. That may be their personal machines more than the site.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

There is a chance that your host has a temporary network problem, where all members seem to be using the same IP (of a gateway router), and for some reason that IP would be one in your ban list. This is a real life case I have encountered, when my host was doing a temporary redirect during a server move.
Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Kindred

Also, banning people by IP is basically useless and a waste of SMF resources.

Ban by username or email...
If you absolutely MUST ban by IP, use .htaccess to do it, not in the SMF ban system.
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Illhaveanother

No joy over the weekend the owner hasn't got it back up. What would it take to update the simple machines software 1.1 to the latest while keeping the membership signed up and all the rest of the stuff on the site too?
Is that a major thing or what? I've never had a website so IDK.

Arantor

It mostly depends on addons, really, if there's a bunch of addons, there may not be equivalent versions for the current SMF release.

Illhaveanother

I just went through the FAQ in the online manual and found the what version SMF should I use under S
That page has all the options for update or upgrade.
Thank You

Doug Heffernan

Quote from: Illhaveanother on March 14, 2019, 07:51:15 PM
No joy over the weekend the owner hasn't got it back up. What would it take to update the simple machines software 1.1 to the latest while keeping the membership signed up and all the rest of the stuff on the site too?
Is that a major thing or what? I've never had a website so IDK.

You will need at least ftp access for that, and access to the cpanel too. Otherwise there is not much that you can do about upgrading the forum.

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Slava
Ukraini!


"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Illhaveanother

Thank You All for the suggestions. That forum is now up and all updated :)

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