Does anyone know if I can ban users from particular countries - like "@*.ru" ?

As you find them you could add them to the ban list.
I'm not too hot on the wildcard stuff.

I'm not sure if Classic supports the wildcard character (*) or not -- you may be able to just use .ru -- give it a shot, can't hurt to try...

For some things it did, depending upon the version. I think that email bans did. I can't remember (so long ago) when we put in wildcarding for email bans.

Best advice is to try it. Add in *.ru in whatever form the control panel instructions give you, then log out and try to register with a .ru email address.

I gave it a try - wildcard did not work. I guess I will have to wait until I upgrade in a few weeks

I only said I wasn't sure because the examples (below) don't mention it. I have successfully (as far as I know) used simply example.com before, without the @ or *@.

Classic 6.7.2:


The IP ban section doesn't mention wildcards either:


So yeah... give it a shot.

Did you try simply .ru?

To ban all email addresses from certain domain names, type an at sign then the domain name (as in @hotmail.com).

I'd go with jgeoff's advice, just .ru with no *

so just ".ru" - no "@" required?

use the @, doug. I quoted what the control panel says in my quote. Do whatever it is that your control panel says to do.

That doesn't work either. Thanks for all your help - I guess I need to update

That sounds cool. Don't forget a solid backup of everything

I'm confused now.

If you don't know the domain name, can't really use the @ I would think...

It MAY work in Classic using simply .ru rather than *.ru -- one quick test and we'll know for sure.

But yeah, in Threads a simple %@%.ru should do it.

yes, my bad. I quoted your post, which quoted the control panel, and when I reiterated I left out the @ sign. I'd made a typo and in the process of cleaning it I deleted the @. Didn't notice until he picked up on it. Guess he's paying better attention than I am.

Now I'm even more confused, thanks.

So you're saying he should try  @.ru  ?

I'm saying he should do exactly what it says to do in his control panel (which I don't have in front of me).

You quoted it as saying use the @, right?



Second line says it would look like this to me.

@.ru

Okay, that's what I thought you meant.

But since (I'm pretty sure) I successfully just used domain.com rather than @domain.com, I figured perhaps .ru would work as well...

I can't test any of this since my Classic board is closed... maybe doug will try both and see...

I had previously tried using @.ru and that did not work but this morning I came back to this thread and have tried using .ru without the "@" and it worked

I will still be upgrading for other reasons though - thanks for your help on this.

No problem

works good

Classic was designed to use the "chomp" command in the banning areas to save code and time. One of the things to remember when banning in the stock classic program is that you need to be very careful on what you ban.

Example: (Unless patched, I doubt it.)

If you ban the following:

mail.com

you also ban the following:

hotmail.com
gmail.com
snailmail.com

Pretty much anything that has the "mail.com" in that order in it

In the IP banning the example was used as 243.21.31 and 243.21

Same here from my experience so the following would be banned using an entry as 243.21.31

*.243.21.31
or
243.21.31.*

You don't need the wild card but this will indicate what how and where it will look using the stock banning system written with the chomp routine.

I hope this helps someone to understand how it works.

P.S. Hello Dave Dreezer, long time no see. How have you been?