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Hi everyone,

I installed MyBB v 1.8.8 in October 2016 on my tiny personal site. I never had time to really put it together.

But I still get requests for new member activation, even though it's clearly not ready for prime time. None of the folks trying to register ever try to leave a note or contact me via the Contact form on my affiliated site, to demonstrate they're honestly interested in my site. (And I get a lot of spam through that Contact form.) I figure that the people trying to register can only be more of the same - spammers wanting to post.

To make a long story short, I want to deactivate my forum for now, until I can get around to really making it worth visiting.

How can I make my forum completely inaccessible publicly, without doing anything drastic like completely wiping it, or changing its folder on my website, or whatever?

I don't want it visible or usable at all, for now. By anyone by me. (I am the only admin for my forum and my site.)

I'm a real noob. Thanks if you can help!
Just disable registrations - it's the first option under ACP -> Settings -> Login and Registration Options
(2018-10-27, 10:14 PM)Ashley1 Wrote: [ -> ]Just disable registrations - it's the first option under ACP -> Settings -> Login and Registration Options

Thanks but I don't just want to disable registrations. I want the forum completely inaccessible.
Then close the board, also via ACP, or add deny all to htaccess.
Thanks - I see it now - the very first "Board Online / Offline" CP setting...

That's definitely a good approximation. But is there a way that even trying to access its URL would result in a fail? Right now, by setting it Offline, it's still showing that the forum exists (but only to give a short message about why it's closed).

I tried searching the CP settings for "htaccess" but it only came up with "Enable search engine friendly URLs?" I disabled that, but making it a little less friendly to search engines isn't the same as making it disappear completely.

Ashley, I really appreciate your responsiveness! Thank you so much.
Add this to the bottom of your .htaccess

#Require all denied
#Require ip 40.14.131.69

if you uncomment the hash's all access will be denied except to yourself. Replace the IP with your own actual IP address.
(2018-10-27, 10:59 PM)Ashley1 Wrote: [ -> ]Add this to the bottom of your .htaccess

#Require all denied
#Require ip 40.14.131.69

if you uncomment the hash's all access will be denied except to yourself. Replace the IP with your own actual IP address.

Thanks Ashley, I really appreciate all this very quick help. I took on more than I could handle trying to make my own website (WordPress, MediaWiki, and MyBB, not to mention the site's CP, Google Analytics - making community forum accounts for many of these things - extra accounts for testing and SO many account names and password - etc. x 1000). One of the really frustrating things is that there can be a lot of questions, even if you read the Help and Google for help, so it becomes a big morass of stymied questions.

When someone like you immediately answers questions precisely, it's really a godsend.

Thanking you again!
You can change folder permission of MyBB installation. Make it not accessible to public.
Ashley1's idea is good.

You could have made it a localhost website.

Install WampServer64 on your desktop/laptop computer and then install MyBB on the WampServer, then import the database from the live website onto the localhost.

That way you can mess around with all of the stuff that you want and if something breaks, re-do it again as many times you want.

The live website will not be touched until you are ready to do all of the changes that you have made from the localhost onto the live website.

That's how I deal with my live website.
(2018-10-27, 10:59 PM)Ashley1 Wrote: [ -> ]Add this to the bottom of your .htaccess

#Require all denied
#Require ip 40.14.131.69

if you uncomment the hash's all access will be denied except to yourself. Replace the IP with your own actual IP address.

Hi Ashley,

I found the htaccess.txt in my /forum (MyBB) folder of my website (could not find a file called simply ".htaccess"), and revised to:


<Files "error.log">
    Require all denied
    Require ip [my ip]
</Files>

But when I make it NOT my ip (for testing), my MyBB site still loads for me.

Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks again!

(2018-10-28, 02:12 AM)meetdilip Wrote: [ -> ]You can change folder permission of MyBB installation. Make it not accessible to public.

meetdilip, I turned off permissions access at the level of the forum's folder. Now my MyBB forum URL gives a giant Error 403 - Forbidden Access. 

That should do it! LOL



(2018-10-28, 06:37 AM)Serpius Wrote: [ -> ]Ashley1's idea is good.

You could have made it a localhost website.

Install WampServer64 on your desktop/laptop computer and then install MyBB on the WampServer, then import the database from the live website onto the localhost.

That way you can mess around with all of the stuff that you want and if something breaks, re-do it again as many times you want.

The live website will not be touched until you are ready to do all of the changes that you have made from the localhost onto the live website.

That's how I deal with my live website.

Thanks Serpius... I'm sure this will be helpful to some folks reading this thread. But I'm hosted by SiteGround and have never made my own local server. Nor does making one (and figuring all that out) sound like a very simple way to quickly de-activate my forum.   Wink  Thanks though! I'm sure some readers will appreciate it.
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