Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Miserable Users

As of 24 Nov 2017 this modification has been withdrawn.

The ever popular "miserable users" hack for vb 3.8.

Basically a way to really annoy anyone you don't want visiting your forum. This version is based on the vb 3.7 version. Credit to Zzed for the original idea.

When classed as miserable, a member suffers ;

1. Slow response (time delay) on every page (20 to 60 seconds default).
2. A chance they will get the "server busy" message (50% by default).
3. A chance that no search facilities will be available (75% by default).
4. A chance they will get redirected to another preset page (25% & homepage by default).
5. A chance they will simply get a blank page (25% by default).
6. Post flood limit increased by a defined factor (10 times by default).
7. If they get past all this okay, then they will be served up their proper page.

Note: All the above options are set in the vBulletin Options.

To install this hack simply download the xml file to your pc and then import it into vbulletin as a product - then create your 'miserable users' usergroup and set the value of this group, and your preferred other settings, in the hacks settings area (vBulletin Oprions > Miserable Users). To make a member suffer just edit their profile to add them to the miserable users group (it will work as either the primary group or as a secondary group).


History:

v3.8.001 - Initial vB 3.8 release.

[mgurain]

Fantastic Paul,
1. Why do they get a blank page with the word ( here ) only !
2. How do I let them see ( Database Error ) ?
3. How can we make it logical random, meaning one from lower limit, next from higher limit, may be difficult ! because now if we put it e.g 50% they will get it many times !

Thanks,,

[bigwater]

Paul, this is a great mod and I have been using it succesfully for a long time now, but I came across an anomoly that may or may not need to be addressed. It should probably at least be addressed in the documentation somewhere.

I had a man bot register on the site and one of the supermods immediately banned him after his first spam post. The bot refused to give up and kept hammering the site, which is typical of these types of bots... not much you can do except put a ban on their ip... but my co-administrator had the bright idea of putting miserable user as a secondary group to the banned user primary group to slow it down. This created a flood of database errors. Between 2a.m. this morning when he added miserables to the banned user and 2p.m. this afternoon, I received over 400 MySQL database error messages "database has gone away" in my email inbox.

No big deal, I took miserables off of him, banned the IP and deleted all but one of the emails for reference. All of the problems ceased immediately. Just thought you might like to know about this weird interaction between banned/miserables groupings for future head scratching.

Edit: latest version of miserables running on vB 3.8.4 PL2

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by mgurain

Fantastic Paul,
1. Why do they get a blank page with the word ( here ) only !
2. How do I let them see ( Database Error ) ?
3. How can we make it logical random, meaning one from lower limit, next from higher limit, may be difficult ! because now if we put it e.g 50% they will get it many times !

Thanks,,

1. No idea, there is no code to output the word "here" ...

2. Create a fake database error page and re-direct them to it.

3. Sorry, I dont understand what your saying.

[ChopSuey]

You actually have a database error page already
includes/database_error_page.html
-------

[TwistedC]

Originally Posted by Paul M

What did you actually put (for another site I think you would need the full url).

I just put in the www.theothersite.com

I did not put in the http:// with that also and just put it into the re-direct destination area. I will try it again but with the full url.


Edit* - It works, now that I added the full addy. Thanks Paul

[KHALIK]

Does this work for vb 4.0? can anyone confirm, please.

I love all of Paul M, products and this is a must for my vb4 forum.

[Paul M]

Nope, but the vb4 version does

[walt59]

Installed and been having fun makes spammers and problem users miserable!!!!

[final kaoss]

hah is this the one that punishes members and keeps track of it with a cookie? If so, there should be a %25 of login failure.

[Dragon Company]

Very funny, thanks