SignIn is a sin

alsheron

Hi, i'm new here and want to say I LOVE this forum software. It's very very good. I'm having a problem though. My webhost recently took down my entire site(!!!) without telling me because some of the filenames in vanilla include the word "signin" which apparently, to them, is a "scam", whatever that means. They're just being dumb probably, but the outcome is that not only didn't they tell me this and I attempted to re-upload the files when my site came back online (it's now offline again!) but I also can't get beautiful Vanilla to work now! I''m no programmer, but i tried to do a "find and replace" in dreamweaver for the term "signin" but as you programmers might imagine, it threw up an error and is obviously not the right way to go about it. I'm hoping someone here knows how this can be resolved. Unfortunately my hosts (good as they are) wont allow the word "signin" in the filenames uploaded to the site and i think there are about 5 files which have this string in the filename. Anyone know of a workaround that wont affect anything else like the add-ons? I'd really appreciate some help with this... :-)

Minisweeper

...move hosts. I guess you could do a search and replace but it would have to replace every single instance in the entire codebase and missing a single term could cause big problems...it's really not worth the headache. Who are your hosts, just out of interest?

Stash

If your hosts suck that much, I'd move, just like Mini says. They shouldn't be doing this to you. Don't stand for it, tell them to stop or you'll move.

marikka

Sounds like the host has had very specific problems with that filename and they're doing this as a quick and dirty fix. It's like when someone's murdered with a stapler and the government bans staplers, ridiculous. Change your host.

ChrisGwynne

Who got murdered with a stapler???

marikka

It's just a awful analogy, hopefully. :P But apparently it's forbidden to shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel in Texas. What does that mean? It means that someone probably did just that and someone else passed a dumb law to forbid it in the future. In the same way that next time the "scammers" will write "s1gn1n" insted of "signin", the hunter will go to the third or first floor to shoot the buffalo. Bang.

alsheron

I know, I know, it's a dumb thing to do for a host. Thing is, i've only just moved to the webhost (aplus.net) and other than this problem they're very very good. I'm going to keep trying to get them to remove the restriction from my account so hopefully they will.... we'll see... I've already tried replacing every instance on "signin" in both the code of the files and also the filenames, but for some reason it's not picking the term up as much as i'd expect and of course i get the inevitable errors. If i somehow did manage to customise Vanilla and remove "signin" and replace it with "sigin" or something and it all worked, would that in any way obviously cause problems for the extensions? This is a crappy situation.... I just can't believe they took down my entire site because of a filename!!

Minisweeper

I don't think it should cause any problems really as most extensions don't really touch signing in methods (maybe stuff like the login in sidepanel thing (possibly even guestpost too, i cant remember)) but I guess all you could do would be to try them and see. You'd soon know if something was up.. You could also suggest/request that your host build an edited vanilla install with any words they're not happy with removed so that their customers can still use it. I'm sure they'd rather you used (what appears so far to be) a secure forum like Vanilla than a big buggy one like phpBB which has (in the past, atleast) allowed attackers to take down entire servers with a hole.

alsheron

I've just been on the phone to aplus.net ans had a long "chat" with them. They said they disabled my account because there are a lot of "scammers" making sites to try and fake stuff like eBay signins..... aaah.... "signin"!!! The stupidity of it all is that they have a script that monitors keyword that doesn't only mark accounts as suspected scammers, but immediately suspends and blocks access to the site, and boy is it immediate. I barely uploaded Vanilla and my whole site was down.... Thanks for the feedback so far....One thing i've meant to ask specifically is that I think I can fix the whole issue if only I can rename the term "signin" from the filenames in Vanilla to something less "threatening" to my dumb hosts like "login". From what I can see there are only a handful of files that have this term in their name: People.Control.SignInForm.php people_signin_form_nopostback.php people_signin_form_validpostback.php and the culprit: Vanilla.Class.SignIn.php The problem i'm having is that i did a "find" in dreamweaver for these filenames in the sourcecode of the entire vanilla folder but strangely it couldn't find these filenames referenced which i found very bizarre. Anyone know why this might be happening and where I can find and change the references to these filenames? I'm pretty sure the term "signin" is ok only if it's in the source code and not a filename.... Thanks for all the feedback so far!

Minisweeper

I found them in: library\People\People.Control.SignInForm.php - Lines 78 and 88, which references the theme files. I guess the Class and Control filenames aren't such a big deal because they're only given those names for human readability...then again the script must include them somewhere. Alas windows grep can't find it either. Try re-naming all 4 files to ....login... and also change those 2 references I pointed out and see what happens?

alsheron

Thanks Minispweer, i'll give it a go and see what happens.... :-)

alsheron

Ok.... well i've renamed the files and seem to have found the references to people_signin_form_nopostback.php and people_signin_form_validpostback.php but nowhere can i find a reference to Vanilla.Class.SignIn.php or People.Control.SignInForm.php I'm not PHP savvy, but i'm guessing these files are referenced in a very specific way that isn't obvious to a n00b like me. Anyone know how these files are referenced? I'm praying that once I can change the references to these files to the newly renamed files with LogIn replacing SignIn I can finally get Vanilla working on my server!??

Minisweeper

Well if you rename them and upload the whole package when the software tries to access them (if) it fails it will tell us which file was trying to read them. That's probably the easiest way of finding out.

alsheron

It's ok folks! I done it I did! (I really hope this works long term) I renamed the filenames with SignIn to LogIn and then did a find and replace through ALL the sourcecode including extensions that contained the string "SignIn" and replaced it with "LogIn". It seems to have worked locally on my xampp installation so the next step is to upload it and see if it brings down my entire site because they think it's a "scam"! Let's just see..... Thanks very much for all the suggestions so far, particularly Minisweeper..... :-)

WallPhone

FYI: All the (Vanilla|Framework|People).(class|control).wxyz.php are included by the ObjectFactory, and that only gets the name of the file (wxyz, in this case) then includes it at that point.

Minisweeper

I thought it must be done somehow like that but I couldn't quite get to the bottom of it. Cheers.

Krak

I can't believe this. I would really recommend a new host man. If they are "really really good" they wouldn't have done something as horrific as this.

I don't even want to imagine the performance hit your taking to have your entire site scanned for a fscking text term of "signin". Seriously would search for a new host.

But, glad you got it fixed I guess

marikkaIt's like when someone's murdered with a stapler and the government bans staplers, ridiculous. Change your host.

"It's just a awful analogy, hopefully." Negative, I thought was freaking perfect. Spot on man.