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, by 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.

As a new administrator, it might be prudent to check the Error Log daily, during the time you are building and developing your forum. Maybe check it only weekly, once the forum is established and running smoothly. Especially keep an eye on it after you have installed a new 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 you feel like you need to investigate a particular error for some reason, 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 formally investigate. First try visiting the Support page of the website. If none of those options provide a resolution, and the error is coming from a mod, 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.

In any case, error entries 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. You can remove all the entries at once by clicking the Remove All button. For a third alternative, the log could be pruned automatically. See the Log Pruning section below, to learn more about it.

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. For administrators, it can be helpful in managing the moderation staff. If permissions allow other moderators to see the log, they might find it helpful to learn from each other's actions. 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.

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. At the top of the log is a search box which allows you to search by member name.

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. A third alternative for removing entries in this log, is automatic pruning. See the Log Pruning section below, to learn more about it.

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 the Clear Log button. Additionally, there is an option for automatic pruning, if as administrator, you feel like it's the best option for your forum. See the Log Pruning section below, to learn how to use it.

Spider Log

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

Task Log

This log records an entry whenever a scheduled task on your forum has been completed. It lists the name of each task, the time it was run, and how much time was needed to complete each task. Note: All times given are server time and do not take into account any time offsets set up within SMF.

Also note that entries in this log cannot be manually deleted. However, Log Pruning allows administrators to schedule automatic pruning, or deleting of entries.

Log Pruning

This feature is found in Admin Center > Maintenance > Logs > Log Pruning. It is designated for the pruning (deletion) of old log entries. Sometimes logs can build up over time, and can take up a noticeable space in your database and server. Other logs take some period of time before they build up. With Log Pruning, you can set them up to be automatically deleted at certain appropriate intervals, depending on the log.

To use this feature, you must first check Enable pruning of log entries. When you check it, several more options will appear below. They are all measured in units of 'days', or set to zero to disable an individual log's pruning. Remember that all these log and list entries can be manually deleted.

Remove Error Log entries - This is the Error Log located at Admin Center > Maintenance > Logs > Error Log. The description of the Error Log is at the top of this page. Remember that entries in this log cannot be deleted before 24 hours.
Remove Moderation Log entries - This log is found at Moderation Center > Moderation Log. The description is just above on this same page in the Moderation Log section. Remember that entries cannot be deleted before 24 hours.
Remove Ban Log entries - This is the new Ban Log, which records an entry whenever a banned member tries to access the forum. It is located at Admin Center > Members > Ban List > Ban Log. It is described just above in the Ban List > Ban Log section.
Remove Reported Post entries - This is specifically for the list of Reported Posts, and not Reported Profiles. You can find it at Moderation Center > Posts > Reported Posts. The description of this list is in the Reported Posts section of the Moderation Center, in the manual.
Remove Task Log entries - This is the log of completed scheduled tasks, which can be found at Admin Center > Maintenance > Logs > Task Log. The description is just above in the Task Log section. This log pruning option may be more important here, since the Task Log entries cannot be manually deleted.

**Close to being finished, but not quite.**

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