Please see SMF1.1:Logs or SMF2.0:Logs depending on the version of SMF you are using.
Error Log
The Error Log will show you errors that occur on your SMF forum -- any error that sends a message to a member will be recorded here. This will include:
- Login errors that occur when members or guests mis-type their username and password or have not activated their account.
- Members or guests attempting to use URLs they are not permitted to see.
- php errors, such as "undefined index".
- Errors accessing the database.
Any error that sends a message to a member will be displayed here (even though these are not really errors) as well as errors that are generated in the coding of the board or mods you may have added.
The error log can be deleted one item at a time or all at once. You can select the errors you wish to delete, and then click the Remove Selection button, or simply remove every error in the error log by clicking the Remove All button. You can also filter the error list by showing only the same error message, error caused by a particular member, error message caused by a particular location of your forum, or error message caused from a particular IP address, by clicking the small icon to left of each of the details explaining that part of the error message.
Administration Log
This section allows members of the admin team to track some of the administrative actions that have occurred on the forum. To ensure that admins cannot remove references to the actions they have performed, entries may not be deleted until 24 hours after the action was taken.
Moderation Log
This section allows members of the moderation team to track all the moderation actions that the forum moderators have performed. To ensure that moderators cannot remove references to the actions they have performed, entries may not be deleted until 24 hours after the action was taken.
Moderation activities can be deleted by checking an entry and selecting remove from the bottom of the display screen. For larger moderation logs, a search feature is enabled by default also at the bottom of the display screen.
Watched Members
Post Moderation and The Warning System must be enabled through Core Features for this feature to take effect.
Watched Members provides a simple interface to keep an eye on troublesome members. Watch status can be set by either issuing a warning beyond a set level by the moderation team or by engaging the status manually on a members profile.
The Watched Users section can be sorted by member or by post:
- By Member - See all members who currently have a "watch" on their profile. This can be set by visiting a members profile and selecting "watch this user", or by increasing their warning level above an admin set threshold.
- By Post - A list of posts created by members that are currently set to be watched, providing a simple checkbox that can be used to mass delete troublesome messages.
Ban Log
The Ban Log shows a log of every ban you have enacted on your forum.
The first column shows the IP address that was banned. Next to that is the email address that was banned, and next to that is the membername that was banned. The next column shows the date that the ban was put in place, and right next to that is a check box which you would use to remove the selected log entries.
Spider Log
In the Spider Log page ("Administration Center > Members > Search engines > Spider Log or Administration Center > Maintenance > Logs > Spider Log), logs of page views made by spiders browsing the forum are available. Depending on the Search Engine Tracking Level setting selected on the Settings page, this page can vary from showing the action of the spider, or not showing the action at all. If the tracking setting is set to Disabled or Standard, spiders will not be logged on this page.
Task Log
Lists logs of the tasks that have been run.
Note: All times given are server times, and do not take any time offsets setup within SMF into account.
Log Pruning
The Log Pruning section of the Administration Center is designated for the pruning (deletion) of old logs, which is not normally needed until after a certain period of time, but they can take up a noticeable space in your database.
The first setting on this page Enable pruning of log entries allows you to set whether you want logs to ever be pruned from your forum, having this option unchecked will keep logs from being deleted, even if certain logs are specified to be deleted after a certain amount of days.
The following logs are able to be pruned, and can you can set how old they must be before they can be deleted on this page. Just enter a integer value in the corresponding inputs to determine after how many days should logs related to the input field be pruned. The logs which can be pruned are:
- Remove error log entries - The error logs come from the errors generated on your forum. You can see these error logs in the error log section of your Administration Center.
- Remove moderation log entries - The moderation logs are logs of the moderation actions performed on your forum, examples include deleting a post or topic, editing a post, or moving a topic. These logs can be viewed in the Moderation Log section in your Moderation Center of your forum.
- Remove ban hit log entries - When a member is banned and tries to access your forum, he or she will trigger logs of their attempt(s) to access your forum while they are banned to let you know that they tried to log in. You can find these logs on the ban log page of the Ban List section of your Administration Center.
- Remove report to moderator log entries - When a post is reported to moderators, the record of the report is saved. You can find these logs in the Reported Posts section of the Moderation Center.
- Remove scheduled task log entries - When scheduled tasks are performed on your forum, the logs are saved. You can view them by going to the Scheduled Tasks section of the Forum Maintenance section of the Administration Center and selecting the View Log link.
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