Simple web server - 310 CHAPTER 10 SECURING AND MAINTAINING PHPBB
310 CHAPTER 10 SECURING AND MAINTAINING PHPBB Figure 10-11. The Ban panel Use extreme caution when banning IP addresses (and especially ranges of IP addresses). Users on dial-up connections typically have their IP address change every session, so banning an IP address may be useful briefly but then ban an innocent person later. Banning ranges of IP addresses could potentially block an entire Internet service provider, so do that only if you really must. You can use sites such as samspade.orgor network-tools.com(which phpBB s Administration panel references) to run WHOIS queries on IP addresses, so you can find out the range that they cover. Then you ll be able to avoid inadvertently banning whole cities or providers. It s a good idea to keep the list of banned IP addresses relatively short and trim. In most cases, once a troublemaker has been banned for a while, she will move on to another forum to cause problems. You don t want to inadvertently lose visitors due to overzealous banning. Moderating Your Forums Effective moderation is the key to every successful community. Moderation must be firm but fair, and it should always be professional. Here, I will show you the tools you can use to moderate posts on your site. I will leave it to you, the community administrator, to develop a policy on moderation that you feel is fair to your members.
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