punishment continues

I’m testing that the IP restrictions work, and boy they do! I’ve set up the account to allow only 2 ISPs (we wanted one but thought that too severe) and then set the punishment for 30 minutes, but after a day, the original, rightful person can still not access their account.

I’ve set up “Allow up to 2 different IPs per Customer (every 30 days)”

and Timeout Period is “if limit is exceeded (punish for 30 mins).

Am I missing something?

Thank you!

Hi Mary.

You can reset the restriction for that user from his profile.

Is it just that user or are there many more users with that restriction being applied to them?

We are still testing and want to see how it will work for the many others, when we get started.

That doesn’t explain why the restriction is continuing, when we’ve set it for 30 minutes. Any ideas?

Thank you!

Hello Mary,

Not sure if this is related, but do you have any caching plugins enabled?

no, in fact, this site doesn’t have too many plugins at all.

That doesn’t explain why the restriction is continuing, when we’ve set it for 30 minutes. Any ideas?

I was asking in case the issue mentioned in these other threads may be what you’re experiencing:

http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/reverse-proxy/
http://www.s2member.com/forums/topic/s2member-and-cloudflare/

Basically, I’d like you to review if your site is viewing each user’s IP properly or if it thinks they all have the same one.

If that’s not the case, could you send your login details to take a look at your site and maybe do a test with a new test account to see the Unique IP’s restriction behavior? s2Member® » Private Contact Form

Thanks. :)

Okay, i’ll check out those threads and come back to you.

Thank you!

Cool. :)

Hi Cristián,

Did you see the private contact form I filled in? It was a couple of days ago.
Thanks,

Sorry, I hadn’t noticed it. It was caught in the server’s spam folder and I only realized it after you told me you had sent it. I’ll look at it now…

I can’t find something that tells me what could be causing the behavior you mention, with the user’s punishment continuing long after the time it’s supposed to last according to your Unique IP restriction setting.

I’ll forward this to Jason and wait for his opinion, and maybe testing, to find what the cause may be.

By the way, I checked your installation with a script we have and it threw a couple warnings you may want work on. http://yoursite.com/s2member-server-check-120703.php (You had another similarly named file, but it was an older, more limited version of the script I used this time.)

Thanks Cristián,

The link you have provided goes to one of those sites where they look like they are selling the domain. Are the issues with my installation of WordPress or of s2member?

Thanks,

Right, you should replace yoursite.com with your own domain name. I didn’t want to post it in public without knowing if that was fine with you. :)

oops, sorry, totally missed that! :-) Oh, the strange (dumb) people you must have to deal with. :-(

The only issue I can see is a WordPress memory limit.

Will Jason eventually come back and give his opinion on what could be causing the lengthy punishment? (or it not ending at all?) IN the meantime, I can clear any issues manually.

Thanks again,
Mary

Thanks for the heads up on this thread.

The first thing I look for in these cases (and I’m sure you already have)… is the IP being reported by the server?

I test this from within WP, so we get the actual IP that’s reported from inside the WP framework, in case of any manipulations being performed by plugins. The easiest way is to put this Shortcode into a test Page on the site, created by WordPress.

[s2Get constant="S2MEMBER_CURRENT_USER_IP" /]

See also: http://www.s2member.com/codex/stable/s2member/api_constants/package-globals/#src_doc_S2MEMBER_CURRENT_USER_IP

If that appears to report your own IP address properly, then now it’s time to look deeper. In this site, this seems to be working properly.

The next thing I look for is under WordPress -> Settings -> General. Is the server time (i.e. the WordPress UTC time) accurate? If it’s not, there could be a problem there. In other words, is the server’s clock inaccurate? In this case, it seems fine to me. UTC time is reported properly by this server.

Other things to look for….

Were the IP Restrictions setting changed recently? In this case, it is very small, allowing only 2 unique IPs per customer. If it was originally set to 5, then reduced to 2, were the IP Restrictions reset after the change? They need to be reset after any change, so that previous IP logs are cleared away, making it possible to report things accurately under the new setting(s) for IP Restrictions.

See: Dashboard -› s2Member® -› Restriction Options -› Unique IP Access Restrictions -> Reset

Is the user’s browser (i.e. the user reporting the problem), somehow caching the page content, even beyond what the server allows? In other words, is it possible the customer is viewing an error message that was cached by their browser, from a previous failed attempt? s2Member makes every effort to avoid this happening, by sending no-cache headers to the browser. However, some users intentionally force browser caching at all times. This is more commonly associated with users on slow connections.

If all else fails, you can attach a logging routine to s2Member’s IP Restrictions.

Please create this directory and file:
/wp-content/mu-plugins/s2-hacks.php
( these are MUST USE plugins, see: http://codex.wordpress.org/Must_Use_Plugins )

Thank you Jason. The problem of caching sounds possible, although I can’t be sure. I often have that problem with my computer and it seems to be the router that causes the problem. This client may have that issue.

In the meantime I’ve changed the permissions to 2 sites rather than the original 1 to avoid too many issues.

We have more clients signing up now, so I will get a better test of this.

Thanks again for your help. Great product and great service. And I have to say that your videos are a lifesaver. I wish more companies took the time to do them, as it must save you a lot of time in teaching people how to use s2member!

Mary