Thread

Hi Everyone,

Long time no post!

I’m posting today because the site where I have forums installed (http://prettyill.com) has a single user who cannot post.

They can login to the forums, and stay logged in, but cannot post.

Additionally, they cannot reregister.

The things they cannot do result in the harrowing “You are not authorized to perform this action”

The user feels that this is unique to our forum because as she puts it, she is “active in the online community and has no problems on any other forums.”

We have tried the usual change browsers, change usernames, etc. I can log in and post as her too.

Is there a setting that may be affecting this person’s ability to post? What can I look for to troubleshoot this?

Thanks so much for your assistance.

Hi, Caroline!  It has been awhile, how are you?

We see this sometimes with some EE security settings.  Can you check in Admin > Security and Session Preferences and turn off “Require IP” as well as secure forms, and have the user test again?

Let’s start with those and move on from there.  Have you asked this user to try from a different network? Are they only having this problem themselves from one location?

It is also a good idea to have them disable browser extensions that may be impacting things - I can think of items like Ghostery, etc, that could be part of the problem; though I’ve not run into those myself.

Let us know, thanks!

Thanks Lisa -

I had Require IP turned off, but not Secure Forms, so it’ll be interesting to see if that helps.

Testing in multiple environments for this user is prohibitive, from my conversations with her. No smartphones either.

I flipped the Secure Forms switch, and have notified her. Lets see what happens.

Thankya!

Hi Lisa,

None of these helped. Is there something else I can try?

Thanks!

Caroline -

Is your client behind a network proxy or firewall, by any chance?  Some countries have these, so knowing where she is located might help figure it out as well.

Can you also have her go to google and type in “what is my IP?” and hit enter. It’ll show her IP at the top of the search results.  Ask her to do that 5-6 times and see if the IP changes or stays consistent.

That information will help lead us to an answer, hopefully.  Thank you!

Hi Lisa,

Here’s her response:

“I checked the IP address several times and allowed some time between checks. Checked over a couple of hours. It did not change. I am in the USA.

PS… I have Windows 7.  It has a built-in Firewall.  I do not use anything other than that and don’t have problems elsewhere.”

What’s next?

Thanks for your continued help!

Hello Caroline,

Lisa is busy with some other things today. Thought I would chime in and see if I could help out.

I would like to rule out this being anything to do with networking.

Can you create a new user for your faithful forum friend and ask her to login with the new user?

If she can, then we know that networking is not an issue and that her actual user account may be the culprit.

We can take things from there. Thanks so much!

Cheers,

Hi Shane,

Thanks for the help.

I had her log in as a new user that I created, which she did, and got the same result as her other username.

Thanks for any/all help!

CCB

Hi,

Can you look at the last time that user logged in through the Control Panel: Tools—>Logs—>Control Panel Logs. See if that IP is blacklisted?

Also, I know you mentioned this is not the best, but can she try to login from a different location? A library or a laptop in a coffee shop?

Everything is pointing to this being an IP issue or something on the users end.

Cheers,

Hi Shane,

She doesn’t have CP access, only access to forums.

The user from what I understand may have limited mobility and may have one sole point of contact to the internet, which is fine for all forums and for half the functionality of EE’s forums. On the other hand, I can post as her from my computer.

So if this is an IP issue or a user-specific issue, that doesn’t mean I can just wash my hands of it. I’m trying to figure out what I can do in the permissions of the system to help her gain access to posting. It’s some security thing that isn’t enabled in other softwares.

Is someone familiar with the filters that posts go through able to help me further?

Hello Caroline,

Totally. Please do not misunderstand me, I did not mean that this ruled out us digging deeper or that we were just going to be moving on.

I think it’s best if we login and take a look, see what we can determine. Please be on the lookout for am email from EllisLab.

Cheers,