Randem Systems Support Board

Hello, dear friend.

Thank you for the information posted.

In my case, I had the same 8% problem. After uninstalling the app or deleting files, I discovered the problem was a LOG folder saved in the destination folder where the files were copied. It was hidden in the SYNCAPP folder. Deleting those sync logs made it work. Your guide was very helpful.

Thank you.

Contact Form Denial is now officially part of BotBanish as of 1/30/2025.

There has been an increase of people that are attempting to market their wares thought the use of the contact form. It has become an increasing annoyance and a waste of resources of a website to deal with these issues. This stand-alone utility is also included in BotBanish Version 6.0.00 which will also lock out the users from accessing the website (Full BotBanish Version Only).

This simple yet effective plugin for WordPress (other platforms will soon follow) will discourage the marketeers from targeting your website. There are now bots on the internet which seek out contact pages and automatically fill them with their marketing information. This is where Contact Form Denial comes in. Once the utility is set to recognize the contact page (or any other form that sends emails via the WordPress system), will be scanned for items or phrases that have been selected that will determine if they are SPAM and log them to a file and not allow the email to be sent.

Contact Form Denial can handle multiple forms at once. All that is needed is to put the Contact Form Denial plugin into Learning mode and then send an email as an administrator from the form that is to be protected. The utility will gather the subject name of the form so that it will recognize it in the future for checking.

The administrator will have near complete control over what this utility will look for to determine if an email is SPAM.


Basic Installation Instructions:

1 - Upload the plugin and activate.
2 - Find the menu selection "Contact Form Denial". Click on it to see the settings.
3 - Check the checkbox for "Contact Form Learning Active"
4 - Click the "Save Changes" button.
5 - Right click on "Visit Site" and then select to open in a new tab, which is located in the top menu where the name of your site is. This will open the website as an administrator.
6 - Navigate to the contact form. Fill out the form and submit it.
7 - Go back to the original tab and click the browser refresh button. The "Subject" area will populate with the contact form's subject and the "Contact Form Learning Active" will be unchecked.
8 - Remove the original "Contact," (first time only) or other form names from the Subject then click "Save Changes".

This form's email will now be monitored to discourage submitter and remove unwanted emails from the contact form submission. More than one form can be monitored by repeating this process for each form. The Subject line will have the names of any form (comma separated) that the plugin is to monitor.

Items can be added or removed from the "Eliminate" and "Forbidden" areas to achieve the level of protection that is needed. Logs of rejected emails are kept in the plugin's directory in the logs folder.

The abuser will just get a message that there was an error when submitting the contact form that was rejected. This error message will be generated by the contact form that the website uses.

Some plugin and MODS may not install due to the BotBanish protection scheme. Temporarily deactivate BotBanish and then install the plugin / MOD. You can now reactivate BotBanish and all will be well.

When moving your staging site to production you will need to deactivate BotBanish on the staging site BEFORE you attempt to move the site. If you do not deactivate BotBanish, the move may not complete due to the BotBanish protection scheme.

BotBanish should NEVER be installed on a live site without making sure you run it in a staging area. As with ALL plugins, the professional way of maintaining a website should be in the staging area first to make sure you are aware of how the plugin works and to make any modifications to the setting to insure a safe environment and not to crash the website.

In the even of a crash, one should always know how to back-out any plugin to regain control of the site.

It is recommended that all the BotBanish entries be moved to the top of the .htaccess file to prevent protection from being diverted. If other commands are in front of the BotBanish entries, they can divert from the protection that BotBanish allows. This will be the default in Version 6.0

Aloha Marshall,

Did you run the Pre-Install check on your hosted domain before install? What are the errors in the SMF Error log? A screenshot would be helpful...

Also check for the error logs in BotBanish/bot/Client/BotBanish_logs for any information.

Please state the version of any software that you are using. It will help with the diagnoses. I.E Apache, NGINX, SMF etc...

BotBanish was tested to SMF 2.1.4.

I have the latest version  of  smf and botbanish BotBanish_Client_SMF_v5.2.01.zip. When i try install from the the smf packet manager all goes will until i get this-select Provider:
Google
Yahoo
Microsoft/Outlook/Hotmail/Live/Office365
then it goes no further.I am using firefox browser and the default smf theme.

BotBanish will lock IP addresses out for the following indiscretions which are determined to be bot activity:

• Attempting to login too many times. This has a user defined value, the default is 30.
  
  
• Auto filling of registration page information. This is how some bots will attack systems to gain access. Some user extensions that auto fill page entries may trigger this also.
  
  
• Bad or empty user-agent information.
  
  
• Repeated attempts to access system very quickly in short successions, default is 30.
  
  
• Fake email addresses that are found in our database or dynamically determined to be fake.
  
  
• User or bot attempting to spoof a known good bot.
  
  
• User coming from a bad, invalid or blacklisted domain, URL, IP address or country.
  
  
• Multiple IP's coming from the same segment searching for content, default is 25.
  
  
• IP's with no associative domain.
  
  

The usage of BotBanish can be confusing without knowing how it works. We will attempt to explain some basics do's and don'ts. The difference between being "Locked Out" and being "Blocked" are as follows. A lockout occurs in BotBanish when BotBanish determines an IP address is behaving like a bot. The IP address is redirected to a Google Search Page. A "blocked" IP address never gets access to the system because it is blocked in the .htaccess file and does not get the chance to abuse the system. This will be redirected to an Apache error document page. NGINX does not use an .htaccess file but Apache with NGINX cache proxy does.

BotBanish will Lockout IP addresses using the following Document Errors:

400 - Bad Request

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 400 Bad Request response status code indicates that the server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (for example, malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).

401 - Unauthorized

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 401 Unauthorized response status code indicates that the client request has not been completed because it lacks valid authentication credentials for the requested resource.

This status code is sent with an HTTP WWW-Authenticate response header that contains information on how the client can request for the resource again after prompting the user for authentication credentials.

404 - Not Found

The HTTP 404 Not Found response status code indicates that the server cannot find the requested resource. Links that lead to a 404 page are often called broken or dead links and can be subject to link rot.

A 404 status code only indicates that the resource is missing: not whether the absence is temporary or permanent.

405 - Method Not Allowed

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 405 Method Not Allowed response status code indicates that the server knows the request method, but the target resource doesn't support this method.

The server must generate an Allow header field in a 405 status code response. The field must contain a list of methods that the target resource currently supports.

406 - Not Acceptable

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 406 Not Acceptable client error response code indicates that the server cannot produce a response matching the list of acceptable values defined in the request's proactive content negotiation headers, and that the server is unwilling to supply a default representation.

BotBanish will Block IP addresses using the following Document Error:

410 - Gone

The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 410 Gone client error response code indicates that access to the target resource is no longer available at the origin server and that this condition is likely to be permanent.

These conditions are the default that BotBanish placed in the .htaccess file. BotBanish places this protection in the .htaccess file.