It is also possible that you are connecting to the site via a proxy server.  According to our rules, this may result in you not having access to the forums.  We suggest you try to connect directly in this case.

We are aware that some folks don't take the time to actually read the forum rules. That's a shame but it's not our fault. In any case we make it obvious before you register. Remember the summary of rules you agreed to (screenshot below)?



The Banning FAQ

Why have such harsh rules, and why ban people without warning them?

In a nutshell, the spam problem is so bad we have no choice. Forum-spam works in a similar way to email spam, except that the spammers post messages in forums.

In the good old days, forum spammers were mostly automated so email validation and CAPTCHA security kept most of them out. These days the spammers employ real people to manually post spam messages. No amount of automated tests can stop them because they are just as real as genuine members.

Forum spam is often quite sophisticated. For example, a spammer may post a message that appears to be a genuine question such as "I've heard about this product and it seems to have good reviews. Does anyone know anything about it?" Sometimes the spammer registers two or three additional usernames in order to reply to their own question with glowing recommendations.

Another common trick is to post a "helpful tutorial" that just happens to include links to the spammer's products.

All of this wouldn't be so bad if the products were good, but they usually aren't. Often they are complete scams. We need to protect our genuine members—not to mention the fact that our forum would begin to resemble a trash heap if we let spammers loose.

We can't warn spammers because they don't want to post anything other than spam, so they just post as much as they can until we ban them.

But my message wasn't spam, it was just [insert description here]

We deal with so much spam that some genuine messages get wrongly identified, just like email spam filters. Let us know what your message was about and we'll talk.

What if I have a genuine product or website that your visitors would like to know about?

We do make exceptions so feel free to contact us and discuss it. However in most cases we will ask you to follow the normal protocol that everyone else uses. Here's how it works....

Many of our members promote themselves through our forums by putting their URL in their signature link. We also allow regular contributors to recommend their own websites and products (within reason). Those who participate a lot and have good websites get good traffic from us. The catch is that you have to be a genuine participant. You need to get involved in the forum, help answer questions or just chat in the discussions. This shows that you are are a genuine person, willing to make a fair contribution in return for the promotion you'll get. If this doesn't sound like a good deal, we're sorry to have wasted your time but that's just how it is.

By the way, don't think that you can get away with posting a few messages saying nothing more than "me too" or "yes, I agree". This is a common spammer trick to get their post count up. Unless we've agreed to an exception, only genuine participants can promote themselves and have access to other areas such as the Marketplace.

Either none of this applies to me, or I made a genuine mistake and I'm sorry

Cool. If you still want to be part of the forum, contact us with your username and we'll talk. Despite the tone of this page, we're actually quite nice people. We understand that you may have just been really excited about something you couldn't wait to tell everyone, so you forgot to read the rules properly. If you say sorry and you're willing to abide by our rules, we'll reinstate you and forget this ever happened.