Web Site forum?

[Mnemolth]

I remember someone asking this before but I don't think they ever got a reply. And now I can't find the post. Anyways, before, if my memory does not escape me, there was a forum for budding website builders? Where has it gone? I'm sure lots of people here build or maintain sites, and I'm sure many of them are related to anime. That's why most Boards have one, is there a particular reason I'm not aware of why this Board doesn't have one? Just curious. :D

[EDIT]Oh and on a completely unrelated note, can someonen fill me in on how banning works? Can mods ban or only admins? And is the said banned member then COMPLETELY removed from the Boards, including all his posts, ie he is deleted from the database. If so I find that a little disturbing. Kinda 1984-like. I was just wondering cos there was a quote from a 'Stew' on the Newbie lounge. But I couldn't find his post nor his membership.[/EDIT]

[Kinetic]

[color=darkblue]
There was, but it had gone completely inactive and was just taking up bandwidth/space so it was destroyed.

To answer the other question, when a member gets banned, they can ban the e-mail, screen name or IP Address. When they ban your name/e-mail, I believe that you are erased from the database completely but are able to come back under a different name/e-mail (although you shouldn't).

When they ban your IP, you're gone forever unless you get a new IP, which, I think you can only do by using another computer, but I'm not sure.
[/color]

[James]

[color=royalblue]To answer your questions...

We did have a web development forum. But due to lack of interest, it was cut. It might be put up again in the future though.

There are some other forums that are currently under performing. But I'm giving them some time to let them grow...and if they don't grow, they'll be cut.

We don't want to have a fat, bloated boards full of forums with only a few posts. Rather, we want to have forums that people are going to actively post in.

As far as banning goes...yes, we usually just ban someone's account. Their account and posts do not dissappear, however. Rather, their status is simply "banned".

If the same person returns and continues spamming, we ban their entire computer...so that they are not able to make another account on the same machine. In some cases, we enact an IP ban immediately (like with that Beam Kirby guy who started spamming like an idiot).

Sometimes, we delete a user's account. This rarely happens, but sometimes it happens if people want their name and they are inactive...or if they are simply inactive. I recently removed most of our inactive members (if I hadn't, we'd have about 4,000 members by now). No real point in doing that...but it helps if someone has a name that others want, but are inactive.

I hope that answers your question :)[/color]

[Phantom]

Also, many connections to the internet are still dynamically assigned through DHCP in an older technology where the host just takes an ip from a pool, and has ultimately a different ip each time he/she logs on.

How does one take care of that type of pest? Continuous ip bannings until the entire pool of ip's in which this person obtains their ip' from is completely banned?

ORRR do you just ban that name... I really dont get how anyone could consider banning a single ip to work on most computers. Even with the statically assigned ips.. if the person is banned, and decides to change the last octet of their ip, which thus changes usualy their subnet host id by one or two decimal numbers

Ex: 24.44.192.2 --> 24.44.192.4 (given .4 is not already assigned to somone else, or that it is not even in that particular subnet)

....how is this kind of problem solved? Can you ban with the dns of a computer?

ex: my dns would be,

GODRUSH.ttg.internet.loo.ca

...cant you just ban that?

Because as reverting to waht i previously said:

even if the person obtains a new ip address, from the DHCP pool, or statically changes his/her ip addres. The DNS will continually be the same....

ex: 216.154.32.3 with a DNS of Exior.rogers.ca --> changed to 215.154.32.5

if changed on the sAME machine... the DNS will stillllll be Exior.rogers.ca anddddd.. even if they are shifty enough to change their ip..they would not be smart enough to change their DNS...in other words...the dns ban CAN be a very efficient way... do you have any knowlege on this James? ..or is the IP the traditional way? and uve not explored other?

[Sara]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by James [/i]
[B][color=royalblue] I recently removed most of our inactive members (if I hadn't, we'd have about 4,000 members by now). No real point in doing that...but it helps if someone has a name that others want, but are inactive.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE] [SIZE=1]::blinks:: Something makes sense now. A friend [who admittedly never posted] recently tried to access his account and couldn't .[/SIZE]

[Circ]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by James [/i]
[B][color=royalblue]or if they are simply inactive. I recently removed most of our inactive members (if I hadn't, we'd have about 4,000 members by now). No real point in doing that...but it helps if someone has a name that others want, but are inactive.[/color] [/B][/QUOTE]

I think all big database-based interacive sites should go through this rather reagularly. Friends of mines started a HP RPG domain, which is very popular, but entirely asp based. They recently went through the database and deleted about 8000 account over 12000 that were never used. Reason is that many, many people change username, (or the house they are sorted in) by just registering again.

[MathGuy2]

Mystic's Knight, my Internet accounts (all three of them I've used over the past few years) don't correlate the DNS with the computer. If my IP was, say, 169.254.123.321, then my IP would be something like comp321.net123.lafayette.louisiana.ISP.com. A better solution would be to block MAC addresses (like 00-30-BD-62-FF-03), which effectively blocks a physical computer. (But that'd take a significant bit (no pun intended) of low-level TCP programming work on the web server.)

If you ban all the IPs of a spammer, eventually someone with the spammer's same ISP would get the IP or DNS of the spammer.

Or maybe they use a ban cookie so that you can't reregister with the same browser on same computer (unless you clear your cookies), or something like that.

[Phantom]

But you forget mathguy.. the only time your mac address is ever broadcasted thru port 80 (http), is when you need to associate your self with the server,with an arp request...also, they do not save mac addresses in arp tables for more than oh...10 mins at MOST.. THUSSSSS unless the person's mac adress was constantly arp requesting ob's server... ob's server would lose the mac adress anyway. Bleh... you could ask somone to setup script that would SAVE mac adresses, and than scan each time somon....****!! what am i talking about.. Mathguy..

have you ever heard of packet switching? ...after the router switches packets through the internetwork, the ip is somtimes switched throught the packets... BUT ..if OB is on a server that is of higher end quality, there will be a switch of some sort filtering the collison domain on which the server is running from....even though the packets are being sent through your ip...the acess of the Frame (where the MAC address is stored in the frame header) that the SERVER see's will have the SWITCH's mac address, not the the host's (me or you).

You see? Even if you block my MAC ..that doesnt matter... the only mac address the server see's would be either the closest Switch/Router's MAC ...because, in order for the packet to make its hops.. it has to be packet switched... bleh.. im not sure if you understand what i am getting at..but there are so many drawbacks of using the physical adapter adress for banning purposes.. cuz i can just see...the program being defective and blocking the nearby router/switch's mac addres..thus blocking ANY incoming traffic... thus banning everyone lol.. :) even the admins..

[Mnemolth]

*glances at MathGuy and Mystic* Look out folks, we have genuine real geeks loose amongst us! Hide! Hide before they find you and force feed Star Trek down your throat! Heheheh.

But back to the topic at hand, I miss the website forum. I kinda like giving useless pointers to beginners about HTML. Makes me feel all important and knowledgeable-like. :D

Also I mentioned banning because the Board I was on before I came here did not allow mods to ban. Only admins can ban (though mod opinions were keenly sought after) Is this how this Board works?

[James]

[color=royalblue]On this board, Category Moderators (Super Moderators) can ban as well as Administrators.

As for IPs...yes, sometimes people have different IPs. But we either continuously ban the IP (they end up giving up...no point coming here if you are banned within minutes each time)...or we ban a partial IP, thus eliminating any chance they have of reregistering.

Sometimes that may block other members (mainly, potential members)...but I'm not too worried about that. I'm not worried because we do it VERY rarely and only in extreme cases.[/color]

[MathGuy2]

Mystic, packet switching...I'd have to look at that. But unless someone's using NAT (Network Address Translation, masks a whole network into one IP for cheaper connections and security, often used in home networks), the packet has to have the IP address of the sender to simply send back a reply for the packet. (The alternative would be to give a random, say 64-bit identifier, and have every router carrying the packet mark the identifier and the sending router, and then delete the IP for security, but then if a router went down... I'm sure the IP people already thought of that first.) I'm not sure if the MAC address is even sent much, but the idea was to add into the web server to track the MAC address. Also (I admit I've never heard of this packet switching) in case it might ban the router, we can track EVERYONE's MAC - like we already track [size=1]IP: [url]Logged[/url][/size] addresses. Then if a rogue user's apparent MAC is that of the router, we can try other methods.

James, are you implying that the OB probably has only one member per ISP on average? Blocking a partial IP would block a whole ISP - or at least one arm of it.

Mnemolth, I know nothing about Star Trek.

[Phantom]

You know, your right...In a sense, NAT is used quite a lot for most networks. Saves ip addresses anyway. You got your one assigned ip, and evryone on the other side of the NAT uses their own lil private netork, say a 10 network.

Thats how its like at my school, cuz I cuold log into OB from ANY computer in my CCNA class and no matter which one I'm on the outside ip is the same no matter what hehe.

However, all things considered, Banning works just fine as it is, I think anyway. If we got these boards locked up tigher than ****, there wouldnt be any point in having administrators lol.

[wrist cutter]

So, the question becomes: if you want to post something that would've gone in the web development forum, where would you put it now?

[James]

[color=royalblue]It would go in the PC forum, wrist cutter. :)[/color]