Hiya,

Please note this is my first tut so it may not be up to scratch

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Ever wanted to ban a user in your forum? You ever wanted to ban an IP or email?
Then this is the tutorial for you!

To start off, the banned user group has very limited permissions often where they have no viewing or posting rights. These options can be changed in the forum permissions and group settings but they are generally ok as they are. There are 4 different ways of banning users. The first is to properly ban them and this moves the user automatically into the banned usergroup. Another way is to ban an IP and the other two ways are to ban in ‘advance’ by stopping the registration of specific emails or usernames. All these, I will go into detail further through the tutorial.

1. Normal Banning

As I said earlier if you just want to ban a user. It will automatically put them into the ‘banned’ usergroup. This group will usually have limited viewing and posting permissions. You can ban the user for a chosen time period (1 Week, 2 Months, 1 Year, Permanent etc). This can be done either in the mod or the admin cp depending on your permissions.



To do it in the mod cp you simply go to banning on the sidebar. This will bring you to a page with all the currently banned users on. It displays their username, the reason they were banned, how long for and who by. To ban another user there is a link in the top right corner named ‘Ban a User’. This will take you to a page where you can enter a username, a reason, how long for and what banned group to move the user into (usually banned). Another way to do it through the mod cp is to click on ‘Ban this user in the mod cp’ in their user profile. This is just a quicker way of getting to the ban page.



In the admin cp it is very similar, only this time it has more options. To get to the banning part of the cp you need to go into the configuration tab and then click on banning at the side. This will bring you to another page and you need to click on the tab ‘Banned Accounts’. This is again very similar to the mod cp as you just need to enter the username, the reason and for how long.

2. IP Banning

IP banning is very different to normal banning as it blocks a certain computer from the forum globally. This can only be done in the admin cp. It is in the first tab of the banning section and all you need to do is enter the IP you want to ban. You can also use wildcards which mean any number. For example is you wanted to block 127.0.0.1 as an IP and 127.0.0.2 you could just block 127.0.0.*. In the cp for blocking ips you can see the last access to the forum with that IP, another useful feature. If you tried to access the forums with a banned IP then it would give you an error message. There are a couple of downsides to using this method; the ips can change and you cannot configure any permissions, it is just a full block. This can however be very useful.



3. Username Blocking

Username blocking is a two-in-one type of banning. This is because you can use it to stop certain usernames being used at registration whether they need to be banned or you just want to reserve them. This can be particularly useful when blocking usernames such as admin or moderator. You can see when it was last used in registration as well. It is in the 3rd tab across in the banning section labelled as ‘Disallowed Usernames’. All you need to do is simply add the username you wish not to be used.



4. Email Blocking

Email blocking is another completely different type of banning. It means so when people register with a certain email you specify it denies the registration. It is again only available through the admin cp on the last tab in the banning section. It is labelled as ‘Disallowed Email Addresses’. You can use wildcards (e.g. *@example.com) to stop email domains from being used. A good part of the blocking emails is that you can see how many times it has tried to be used.



Hope you liked my tutorial

Thanks Polarbear541! (Polar or PB)
Tuts Team at MyBBSource

Excellent job! :)
I love how you showed from both the MCP and ACP. :)

MyBBTuts

lol thanks

I had trouble of thinking of what to do at first.

Thanks Polarbear541! (Polar or PB)
Tuts Team at MyBBSource

Yep great tut mate. Very valuable to members. 1 thing i would add is a permenant ip address redirect.
This is not done in the MyBB enviroment but rather in the .htaccess file. (show hidden files if you cant see it.)
I use the below code to create a permanent ip redirect, normally to a suck up page i create. :)


But aside from that. Its the perfect way to ban someone. But i do love the .htaccess trick if its a static ip. Or if its not just drop the last digits etc. Anyway not trying to jump your thread. Great post and a worthy tut.