Christian Forums

Everytime I try to get on for days I get the following....

And then in replying to some I get the 503 errors

And in trying to look at the menu I get the message my last search was 15 sec ago, wait.

But this one is very confusing......  Yes.. still on its side... no time to play with it today

As I stated above, this guy generates hundreds of IP addresses, there is literally nothing that can be done to stop him since he can obtain IP's instantly from outside the IP range that was previously banned. The only way I know to do what he is doing is to have a premium VPN account, it must be costing him a few bucks to harass us.

*Rella, I'm gonna have to show you how to take a screen shot to show us what you are seeing from your end. Anyhow, we are all getting the same interrupt.

Quote from: Alan on Thu Nov 22, 2018 - 09:33:59
As I stated above, this guy generates hundreds of IP addresses, there is literally nothing that can be done to stop him since he can obtain IP's instantly from outside the IP range that was previously banned. The only way I know to do what he is doing is to have a premium VPN account, it must be costing him a few bucks to harass us.

*Rella, I'm gonna have to show you how to take a screen shot to show us what you are seeing from your end. Anyhow, we are all getting the same interrupt.

What I have seen from this guy is that he is able to post multiple entries under the same account name.
There is a gap of approximately 4 minutes between posts.

A routine that assures a new account cannot post more than 1 message every 30 minutes will take the charm right out of his efforts.
Placing a cookie in the browser will assure he has to clear his browser data every time he posts a new message
Placing a session variable in the browser will assure he has to open and close the browser every time he posts.

The above + an IP string comparison is approximately 4 lines of code in addition to some small data capture during the signup phase.

Net result is posting will become too much of a hassle to create new accounts and he is likely to move on to another board.
The alternative is you change the user signup settings of this board to "moderator approval" which is a standard feature in SMF

But then again you dont have access to the server, and you are told not to mess with the database, so whatever solution exists it cannot be executed.

Quote from: AVZ on Wed Nov 21, 2018 - 23:30:30
you mean this?
https://www.whois.com/whois/gracecentered.com

Not quite.  This one:

https://who.is/whois/gracecentered.com

Quote from: Alan on Wed Nov 21, 2018 - 12:04:21

If I was to hazard a guess I would think we are experiencing failure in the array but I can't know for certain. Depending on the size and quality of the server a database from a forum like this shouldn't require too much hardware. Anther forum that I'm on rents their server/hosting as one package for $40 quarterly albeit their member list and age isn't as much as this forum.

At any rate, we have little support here. The admin hasn't been active or logged on in months and the guy that can keep things running smoothly around here isn't getting paid, so we're kinda on our own doing what we can.

In practical terms, this means this forum has no future.

Quote from: NorrinRadd on Thu Nov 22, 2018 - 21:11:21
In practical terms, this means this forum has no future.

If we don't experience any major catastrophes we'll be fine.

I'm growing more and more concerned about admin. I hope all is well with him. For him to be absent and unreachable for so long is just worrisome to me.

Quote from: Alan on Thu Nov 22, 2018 - 21:34:59

If we don't experience any major catastrophes we'll be fine.

Does anyone here have the slightest idea of how to set up a forum like this? I do not mean all that GC offers but the forums themselves?

I have learned to wait out the glitches, and I have learned to do whatever I want to post in  a doc or email them copy and paste to start a thread... or in a long reply.

I will say... it does keep things interesting

Quote from: Ginger Rella on Sat Nov 24, 2018 - 07:25:58
Does anyone here have the slightest idea of how to set up a forum like this? I do not mean all that GC offers but the forums themselves?

I do have some knowledge. I would possibly consider it if something were to happen to this forum but not until such time.

Quote from: Ginger Rella on Sat Nov 24, 2018 - 07:25:58
Does anyone here have the slightest idea of how to set up a forum like this? I do not mean all that GC offers but the forums themselves?

I have learned to wait out the glitches, and I have learned to do whatever I want to post in  a doc or email them copy and paste to start a thread... or in a long reply.

I will say... it does keep things interesting

Not very difficult. Takes a few hours to setup a forum like this.