IP address ban: Toolator working again

Apologies I only have time to do a quickie post and leave testing till later. Creator of Toolator has contacted me (sorry, a long time ago, 23 November 2007) that Toolator ban is working again. Please go to

http://toolator.com/ban

for the latest. There is also a forum at

http://toolator.com/support/index-2.html#cat2

where you can get updates, give the Toolator feedback, maybe even get support from Toolator's creator. Fervently hope if you use Toolator, you give us feedback too by leaving comments in the post.

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IP Address Ban Don't work Anymore

(see update below)

I have published a post How to ban IP address (click BACK button to get back to this page) and in its original version, tested to work. However, I do not have any IP address I would really want to ban, so didn't implement it for any of my own main blogs. However, a blog visitor commented that he couldn't get to the original site I used to generate the code to ban IP addresses. I checked and it was true, so added an update. Later, that site went offline, then online, then offline. I had to put up more than one updates. Then another blog visitor commented that that the site is online, but goes to a different address. The new address is

http://www.toolator.com/

Apparently, the site owner or owners have added more applications, of which IP ban is only one. You have to click on a link "IP Address Blocker" at the above site to get to

http://www.toolator.com/generators/ban/

This is the screenshot from the above site, after I have added my own IP address to ban so that I can test:



If you click on the above screenshot, you will be able to see everything more clearly, including very faintly, my current IP address (mine is a dynamic IP address, which means it is not the same all the time. I may get another IP address if I switch off the modem, switch it on again to get back online) which is displayed faintly in red beside "Don't ban your own IP address:" My current IP address is

60.49.68.218

Today, I got another comment, asking how to add the URL to redirect the person(IP address) we want to ban. As I haven't tested the new site yet, I decided to test for my own blog Natural Remedies. It didn't work. I went to

http://ipchicken.com/

to reconfirm my current IP address, and it was reconfirmed that the above IP address is my current IP address. If you want to check your current IP address, copy the above URL and paste it into your browser address bar (preferably in a new tab with a browser like FireFox so that you do not need to lose this page.

I decided to test it for another of my blog Health is Wealth, and reconfirmed it didn't work.

The above 2 blogs use the New Blogger template, so I decided to test it on a blog Blogger old classic template store, added it direct to the template rather than through the LAYOUT as in the cases above, and it still didn't work.

I will have to do some further checking and will either add an update here or do a new post plus add a link to that new post here if there is any fresh development.

BTW, the latest question from the blog visitor was how to add the URL to redirect the person (IP address) we want to ban. (The IP address ban is not an actual ban but a redirect to another site that we ourself can specify). The original test was done a long time ago, so I cannot remember exactly, but vaguely remembered there was a way to add the URL of the site we want to redirect traffic from the IP address we want redirect to. However, when I did this test, there was no way for me to do that, so I assumed that the site to be redirected to would probably be that of the application creator. But as my test showed, it just didn't work. So you just have to be patient while I try to work this out.

In the meantime, if you happen to be reading this post and want to ban an IP address or you want to test it for yourself, I would very much appreciate you let us (me and this blog readers) know about your experience by adding a comment.

Update 29 October 2007: Got a response from the creator of this IP Address Ban who says he is having problems with his current webhost which I will paste verbatim below:

"The next couple of months I`m going to work on a new system on another webhost. So I hope to offer somewhere in the month January 2008 a new ip-blocker service. Maybe with some extra futures."

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How to ban a person from your blog or Website

You may have some issues with a person. For example, he may be posting unwanted comments on your blog, or you may just don't want him/her to see your blog.

Well, if you know the IP address of that person, you can ban him from your blog or Website. (There is a post for getting the IP address of a commentator on your blog. Refer to How to get the IP address of a someone who comment on your blog.)

Go to Toolator: IP address blocker and you can fill in up to 3 IP addresses of persons you want to ban and redirect either to a default site given by Toolshell or put in the URL of the site you want the banned person to be redirected tool. Then all you have to do is to click a button to generate a code to add to the template of your blog. This will place a button on your blog. Which part of your blog it will appear will depend on where you paste the code. For a guide to this, refer to Blogger template tutorial - adding content via the template. You have a up to 8 choices of what type of button you want.

Note: this will work well if the person you want to ban have a fixed IP address. However, if he has a dynamic IP address, this may not work so well. Also, I tested it using Blogger Beta. Testing IP banning in Blogger Beta. Actually, it is just a redirect. After adding the script, when I tried to get into my blog, I saw it momentarily, and then was redirected to another site (which shows that it works).

Update 8 October 2007: Charles of Artificial Intelligence - One Man's Quest asked if banning more than 10 IP addresses by adding more scripts will work (see comments). I responded saying it will be hard for me to test and suggested he try that. His response was that he could ban more than 10 IP address by his own 11th pipe delimited, and tested it, and it seem to work. He also suggested adding a SECOND head section just before the </html> tag (this should be the last line of the template)
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache">
</head>

to prevent the use of the cache to read whatever got loaded before the redirection take place. I have not tested this yet.

Acknowledge: I came to know about Toolshell IP check and IP ban of Rose Desrochers

Rose said in the comments section that you can't ban AOL users using this method. I would have loved to test that and to update this post, but I don't get many people I want to ban from my blogs, and also not that many visitors from AOL. If anyone have experience with that, I hope you will put your experience in the comments section.

UPDATE 24 December 2006: Toolshell IP Check and IP Ban site is online again. You can now ban up to 5 IP addresses and can choose the site you want the banned person to be redirected to. So the method described below will work again.

UPDATE 23 October 2006: Toolshell IP Check and IP Ban site is no longer accessible. Why, I don't know. However, if you are desperate, you can read through the post, click on the link and see if the site is online again.

Update 5 October 2007: Toolshell IP Ban is online again, but this time you will have to go to Toolator IP Ban, plus now you can ban up to 10 IP addresses. Someone asked if he can ban more, and I suggested perhaps try adding more than 1 scripts, and the feedback I got seem positive.

LATEST: Toolshell or Toolator or whatever keeps changing and I have given up trying to keep up to date. If you need more information, go to their contact form.

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How to get the IP address of commentators

Currently, there is no way one can get the IP address of commentators for those using the Blogger commenting system. This is one way you can try to guess the IP address of commentator. First you have to install a hit counter on your blog if you do not have one already. There are various free hit counters available, including sitemeter and statcounter. Sitemeter is good for summaries. I prefer statcounter for its more detailed statistics. To see how to install a hit counter, go to How do I track visitors to my blog. When you want to track visitors to your blog, sign in to statcounter and click on "Recent pageload activities". You will be taken to a page where details of such as date, time, IP address, etc. will be shown. See screenshot below. (Click screenshot to enlarge)When you want to find out the IP address of a commentator, note the timestamp at the bottom of the comment and compare it with the time shown in the visitors log. When you see a match, then very likely that is the person who made the comment. Get the IP address of that visitor from the log.

This tip was given by Dr. Lisa Cuddy.

This tip can be useful if you want to ban someone who is leaving comments you don't like as shown in this post: How to ban a person from your blog or website (click "BACK" button to get back to this site).

Books from Amazon

Publishing a Blog with Blogger: Visual QuickProject Guide

The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog

UPDATE 16 August 2008: Answer to a question in the comment about whether it is still impossible to get the commentator's IP address for Blogger: "Yes it is still not possible. You can only guess, including the country. But if your blog has low traffic, it can be a very good guess to the point of certainty. If a person comment at, say, 3pm and from morning till night, that is the only visitor to the blog, than you can say that that visitor you see in your visitor counter is the one who commented."

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