Miscellaneous Hacks - April Fools - Ban User

A slight modification of an in house experiment described here.

Users are prompted with the option to ban any user they choose for a period within 3-30 days. Upon submitting, there is a half second pause, then the username switches with their own name followed with another half second pause, before the script finally submits. Don't worry -- the user input here is completely ignored.

The entered username is completely ignored, and the user submitting the form is banned for the period they entered.

Refer to attached screenshots for more info.

It's up to you to link to this file, and you can also view ban.php?do=view for a list of banned users.


... you may want to unban some of these users the next day. No pressure though.

[Magnumutz]

30 of my users got banned

[Lynne]

I switched it to hours and put a notice at the top of my site:

TTD Offsite - Today the TTD Staff will be off having a barbecue (thank you to all the donators on this site!). We'll be having a little beer, and a little wine, along with some fine food courtesy of Mr. Aaron and Ms. Heather. We will be checking in every once in a while, but I'm not sure what our state-of-mind will be like at the time, if you know what I mean! So, while we are gone, we have allowed a couple of trusted users, Mr. Wolf, and Mr. Possessed, and Mr. {insert username here} to watch over the users and if you misbehave, you may find yourself banned by them since they now have banning priveledges. So.... Be Good!

I've so far, in one hour, we have had 8 users ban themselves. I haven't had any comments yet on my subtle hint that we were using donations (our site runs on donations) to have the barbecue.

Thank you for this!

edit to add:
I created a new plugin, April Fools, at postbit_display_complete with the following code:

eval('$template_hook[postbit_userinfo_left] .= " ' . fetch_template('postbit_april_fools') . '";');

and then created a new template, postbit_april_fools, with the following code:

<div class="smallfont"><a href="/forums/ban.php">Temporarily Ban $post[username]</a></div>

That inserted the link into the postbit for them to ban the users.

[nyqnzguju]

will they actually be banned or its just a trick... cuz i don't wanna be sitting there unbanning people

[Hasann]

Originally Posted by nyqnzguju

will they actually be banned or its just a trick... cuz i don't wanna be sitting there unbanning people

they will really banned for 3 days

[nyqnzguju]

Originally Posted by Hasann

they will really banned for 3 days

Then No Point Lol My members Will be Pissed

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by nyqnzguju

Then No Point Lol My members Will be Pissed

I changed mine to ban for hours. On line 55 of ban.php:

    $liftdate = TIMENOW + (3600 * $days);

3600 seconds= 60 seconds/min * 60 minutes

I will click Lift Ban on them in a few hours anyway.

[valdet]

Originally Posted by Lynne

I changed mine to ban for hours. On line 55 of ban.php:

    $liftdate = TIMENOW + (3600 * $days);

3600 seconds= 60 seconds/min * 60 minutes

I will click Lift Ban on them in a few hours anyway.

How can we tweak so it bans them for few minutes and to display the message that they are banned for xx minutes..

[Lynne]

Originally Posted by valdet

How can we tweak so it bans them for few minutes and to display the message that they are banned for xx minutes..

I tried to spell out where the number comes from.... If you want to do:
days = leave as is at 86400
hours = 3600
minutes = 60

Just change the bolded number depending on what you want.

$liftdate = TIMENOW + (3600 * $days);

[valdet]

I just placed a huge link on my site and now there's a BAN frenzy going on. I made it so it only bans them for few minutes.

Is there anyway that forum/ban.php?do=view link saves the list so we can make a Hall of Fame/Shame afterwards. Right now it does not save the names after the ban is lifted so I need to refresh often to see who is banned.

This would be even better..

[samraz972]

I wishsomehow this could have been sent thru everyone on my forum thru private messages!