SMF2.1:Logs - Online Manual

Work in progress, expect frequent changes.

Please see SMF1.1:Logs, SMF2.0:Logs or SMF2.1:Logs depending on the version of SMF you are using.

Error Log

Admin Center > Error Log will show you errors that occur on your SMF forum. This will be any error that sends a message to a member, as well as errors generated from either the core program code or a modification's code. This includes:

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.

Each error in the log shows six icons with the shape of a funnel. Each one allows you to filter, or search the errors in a different way: by username, IP address, session id, url of the page where the error happened, type of error, and the error message. And finally, perhaps most importantly, each error shows a text link "Backtrace Information". This is what the experts will need, to trace the error to its ultimate source. If it's coming from a bug, this will help developers to fix it.

Errors can be deleted from the log one item at a time, by selecting the errors you wish to delete, and then click the Remove Selection button. Alternatively, you can remove every error at once by clicking the Remove All button.

For new, or less tech-savvy administrators, you might find it helpful to watch the Error Log after you have installed a new feature or modification. If it's giving a lot of errors, you may decide not to use that particular modification. There may be others which provide a similar feature, but which do not trigger so many errors. If a modification which generally does not produce errors, suddenly starts giving errors, you might want to investigate that.

If you feel like you need to investigate a particular error, you should start by observing, and informally noting what you think seems to cause the error to happen -- try to remember what you did just before the error showed up. If you can reproduce the error every time, in the same way (for example, a sequence of buttons or steps) you will have enough information to start investigating. First try visiting the Support page of the website. If none of those options provide a resolution, as a last resort, you could try contacting the author or creator of that particular modification. Look in the documentation for that software for contact information.

Administration Log

Admin Center > Maintenance > Logs > Administration Log lists every action taken by administrators. To ensure that administrators cannot hide their actions from other administrators, by removing references to what they have done, entries may not be deleted until 24 hours after the action was taken.

At the top of the log is a search box which allows you to search by member name. This log contains six columns: the Action being logged, the time and Date it happened, the Member name, the member's Position, their IP address, and a checkbox. The checkbox allows administrators to mark specific entries which they might want to delete, by clicking Delete Selected button. Otherwise the log can be emptied all at once by clicking Clear Log button.

Moderation Log

Moderation Center > Logs > Moderation Log allows members of the moderation team to track all the moderation actions that the forum moderators have performed. To ensure that moderators cannot hide their actions, by removing references to the actions they have performed, entries may not be deleted until 24 hours after the action was taken.

Watched Members

Moderation Center > Members > Watched Members provides a simple interface to keep an eye on troublesome members. Watched Members can be sorted By Member or By Post:

By Member - See all members who currently have a high enough Warning level, to be added to the Watched Members list. In the member's profile, administrators can increase their Warning level above what is needed to be added to the Watched Members list. Administrators set that level in Admin Center > Members > Warnings
By Post - A list of posts created by each member on the Watched Members list. It provides a simple checkbox that can be used to delete many troublesome messages at once.

Being added to the Watched Members list, is considered a penalty, or user limitation, for what the forum administrator considers bad bahavior in the forum, by the members listed there. Please see the Warnings page for more information about User Limitations.

Ban List

This page is a sub-menu under Admin Center > Members, and it has 3 other tabs: Add New Ban, Browse Ban Triggers, and Ban Log. Add New Ban is a form for adding newly banned members to the Ban List table. Browse Ban Triggers and Ban Log both identify when banned members try to visit the forum. Browse Ban Triggers registers which triggers were hit, and how many times, while Ban Log registers the date they try to visit.

Until version 2.1, this was called the Ban Log. The new version of the ban log is described below. Now this is called Ban List, and is used to show which members have been banned from participating in the forum. In certain cases, they will not even be able to view the forum. This a step which should be strongly considered, and not handed out frivolously.

This table has eight columns:

Ban name - The name of the member who was banned.
Notes - Any special notes about the ban, which moderators or administrators want to share with each other.
Reason - This is what the banned member was told was the reason they were banned.
Added - This is the date of the banning.
Expires - This is when the ban will expire, if it will expire.
Triggers - This settings is for any or all of four kinds of data which are watched for by the software, to determine when a banned member tries to visit: IP address, Membername, Email Address, Hostname (owner of the email address domain).
Actions - This is the severity of the ban: full, partial, or how partial.
checkbox - This is used to remove items from this table, by clicking Remove Selected button. There is no button to clear this log all at once. However, by clicking the checkbox in the column title area, it checks all the boxes in the table. Then Remove Selected button has the same effect.

Add New Ban

This is the form for adding newly banned members to the Ban List. It's at Admin Center > Members menu > Ban List > Add New Ban.

Ban name - The name of the member who was banned.
Reason - This is what the banned member was told was the reason they were banned.
Notes - Any special notes about the ban, which moderators or administrators want to share with each other.
Expiration - This is when the ban will expire, if it will expire.
Restriction - This is the severity of the ban: full, partial, or how partial.
Triggers - Any or all of four kinds of data which are watched for by the software, to determine when a banned member tries to visit: IP address, Membername, Email Address, Hostname (owner of the email address domain).

Browse Ban Triggers

This page contains a table that shows which Ban Triggers have hit the server, and how many times. A ban trigger is a certain piece of data which the server recognizes when someone visits. If the server identifies one which was banned, a new entry in this table will be created.

There are four columns:

Banned entity - This is the specific trigger which hit the server.
Ban name - This is the banned member's name.
Hits - This is the number of times the specific trigger hit the server (or i.e. a measure of how many times the banned member tried to enter).
checkbox - After selecting which triggers you want to delete, click Remove Selected Ban Triggers button.

Ban Log

The Ban Log shows all attempts to enter the forum by banned members. This is a new feature in version 2.1. The function which the Ban Log previously provided now occurs on the Ban List, which is described above.

This log has five columns:

IP address - This is the IP address that was banned.
Email address - This is the email address that was banned.
Member name - This is the member name that was banned.
Date - This is the date that re-entry by the banned member was attempted.
checkbox - This is used to remove the selected log entries, by clicking Remove Selected button. Otherwise the log can be emptied all at once by clicking Clear Log button.

Spider Log

In the program, the Spider Log can be found in Admin Center > Forum > Search Engines > Spider Log. Here is the Spider Log section of the Search Engine page, in the manual.

Task Log

This log records all the scheduled tasks that have been run on your forum.

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.

**Page updated to this point. Still not finished**

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SMF2.1:Logs From Online Manual

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