Lancia Motor Club

Two of us, Glyn Williams and myself, are putting together a series of handbooks on Fulvia restoration and maintenance.   To do this we are going back over our previous LMC Forum posts to extract text and images.   However we are both getting the 403 Forbidden screen frequently.   I can now barely switch beyond 5 forum pages without hitting it, which is making life very difficult as I have to then wait a while before starting another session.  It is now impossible for me to reach the central 40 or so pages of my rebuild thread.

I am running Google on an Apple MacBook Pro.   I have no anti-virus software.   Has anybody any suggestions?

You are lucky... I can only do 3 clicks...

Seriously the committee is aware but probably the only solution would be to archive this forum and create another with more recent software. A software update was attempted a year ago but the problem is that the update was too many generations on to make it work.

I'd a lot more posts lined up to do yesterday on the B12, and today, Steve and Theo have carried out the necessary repair

P

A 403 is usually an access permission issue but it seems it might be a deliberate set-up after several pages have been accessed from a user... potentially to prevent a malicious denial-of-service attack(?).

A potential way around this ... if you're trying to view multiple pages for a specific thread is to use the cached version of pages. This is possible to do via a web browser but there is also a useful 'WayBackMachine' option likely the best as it is effectively this familiar forum but from a cached snapshot context.

Cached via WayBackMachine
The main WayBackMachine website is at https://web.archive.org (https://web.archive.org)

You can put in the forum URL yourself and navigate to a snapshot indicated but using Norm's rebuild thread as an example here's a specific link to a recent cached version:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240621150934/https://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=9873.0 (https://web.archive.org/web/20240621150934/https://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=9873.0)

You'll note you get all content and pictures and can navigate through as usual.

Cached via web browser
There's a nice thing you can do with the site keyword to get a browser to return the pages it has on a particular subject and then from there view the cached version of a page the browser has stored. Example:

    site:https://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk "report on (slow) S2 coupe rebuild progress"

This then asks the browser to return all pages with that subject/phrase from the site specified. Most browsers then have an option to view their cached version; in Microsoft Edge for instance there is a drop down arrow next to each result to select this.

The forum was not working yesterday. 403 is a different issue.

True, but I'd gotten them intermittently too

P

This really needs sorting out. I would post no end of stuff if the forum actually worked. We should have a vote at next years AGM about fixing it with reports from relevant experts on the options and their pros and cons.

 I second this proposal

Scott - many thanks for your suggestions.  I'll take a shot at your suggested workaround over the weekend.

I have had a torrid time over the last few days trying to access my own thread on the forum.    Frank made a recommendation above:

"This really needs sorting out. I would post no end of stuff if the forum actually worked. We should have a vote at next years AGM about fixing it with reports from relevant experts on the options and their pros and cons."

And Richard seconded this (see above).

Can I ask any committee members reading this if they can advise me of the appropriate process for me to formally request further investigation of this problem, and identification of a potential fix and tabling at the next AGM as Frank recommends. 

Just to feedback on this thread, as you've seen I've uploaded quite a few posts and photos in the last week or so.

Not once have I had a 403.

However occasionally when I've carried out a search and  received 5/6/7 etc pages of results, only then, usually by page 4/5 do I then get an error. I wait a while, then search again.

So this issue is erratic and intermittent with no seemingly common factor

It has been investigated several times and noting Tim's post, it may be the only option

P

The issue is erratic but dominatingly persistent for a significant part of the membership.

To follow up , 403 has been looked at - extensively and there doesn't seem to be a way to reproduce it - I do not suffer from it

( my setup is Windows10&11(with AntiVirus)/Chrome or Edge/Android devices )

I think the only solution will be an installation of a new forum and to set this one to be read-only. This is not trivial ( there is no automated way to set up user accounts that I know of for instance )

We cannot upgrade this forum and the installation in 2004 ( as far as I can tell ) is not standard - so the upgrades 'needed to be fettled' - we are at the end of v1.1 of the software, next step is v2.0. There is nothing to say they'll work ( because the installation is not standard ) and if they don't we may be left with nothing.

An option may be to ask for a clone of the server and trial the upgrade there ... this is also non-trivial IMHO and depends if Zen Hosting can do this

Meanwhile, I've attached my profile from the forum using the default settings from SMF ....

I can create the 403 condition in 4 clicks on my MacBook.  I’ve just checked again and that’s how many it took.  The forum is now virtually unusable for me.  It worries me because I’ve pointed so many people to it as a source of information to help them with their maintenance and restoration efforts and I don’t know how many may have given up in frustration.

I see the forum content as the greatest asset that the club possesses. A tremendous amount of effort has been expended by members over the years in documenting their experiences and their advice to others.  I personally found it invaluable during the five year restoration of my car, and I spent a lot of time (willingly given) in documenting my experiences on the forum for the benefit of others.

If screen shots, timestamps or settings records are required to help fix the problem I’d be happy to provide them.  If help is needed in trialling alternatives I would be willing to provide it.

I believe, moving forward, that a solution that freezes historical information in read-only form would be acceptable - provided the frozen data is searchable.  Have any previous investigations identified the best available forum software products?   And do any of these allow porting in of historical data in the way I’ve described?  Or, could we operate two forums perhaps, a historical one (read-only, but searchable), and a current one - preferably both reachable from one home page? That would not be ideal but I believe would be better than where we are.

Thank you Norman, that about sums up my thoughts and experience.

I am currently rebuilding and working on a B20 that I wanted to record and share, but having tried to start a thread I have now become too frustrated to bother. I think that I may even have started one a while ago but can't search for it because I get the 403 thingy before getting there

Even this short reply will be copied before posting because sometimes I get the 403 when I press "post" so I can always try it again in 20 minutes time !

The Forum has been a great source for me as well but is now too frustrating to use. Maybe a read-only historic view is the answer and then a new working platform

Then it could be down to the individual contributors to "restart" their threads with the same title and maybe a link back to the original thread if they want to continue it ??

I use this forum with regard to my MG.

https://www.the-t-bar.com/

I don't like it as much as the old LMC/Betaboyz Myzen forums, it's less intuitive and I don't find the search function as good plus it doesn't have the logical home page divided by subject etc. However, I guess it is modern as it was fully updated a couple of months ago, although this took quite a bit of work by the admins post update as it stopped working properly on Edge even though it was fine on Chrome.

It's all a classic example of how modern software isn't always an improvement. I've tried several new apps to replace Microsoft Money that I use for my home budget, every single one has been useless.......