I ended up reworking a key part of the forums last night after discovering an issue that has quietly been causing problems for a long time. It's the same one that’s affected users like chuckdawg, who first reported it back in 2015. Since then, it’s been triggering the firewall and blocking some of you from accessing parts of the site. ScottyP was also a recent victim of the firewall of doom due to a similar issue with our admin section.
The issue has to do with how the forums handle SEO-friendly URLs. Most of the time things work as expected, but in certain cases, the system can't properly find some of phpBB’s internal files, like the print stylesheet. These missing file requests happen repeatedly, and eventually the firewall flags that behavior as suspicious.
I was originally going to just loosen the firewall rule, but I decided it made more sense to fix the problem at the source. What I thought would take about 15 minutes turned into six hours of work, and I’m still not completely finished. The current solution seems stable, but phpBB is complicated, and I can’t realistically test every possible situation.
If you come across any errors or run into issues, please take a screenshot or copy the message and let me know. That will help me continue tracking this down and making sure it’s fully resolved.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of what I've been working on ...
Forum Error Debugging and Infrastructure UpdateIssue Origin: This investigation began with a 503 error reported by
Ruthless Cynic yesterday morning, but similar issues were also reported by
ScottyP in late May 2025 and even earlier by
chuckdawg1999 as far back as 2015. These long-standing problems involved users being randomly blocked from accessing the site or encountering 503 errors while browsing the forums.
Root Cause: The forums were occasionally attempting to load internal phpBB files—such as
print.css—using broken relative paths, especially when
SEO-friendly URLs were enabled. These failed requests would repeat with each page load, eventually tripping
mod_security on the server, which then blocked the user or returned a 503 error.
Historical Context: The issue appears to stem from an
SEO mod added many years ago to generate cleaner forum URLs. While generally beneficial for search visibility, it unintentionally introduced path resolution inconsistencies that have quietly caused problems for a decade.
Actions Taken:- Log Review and Replication:
Confirmed the issue by reviewing server logs and replicating it locally using SEO-formatted forum/topic URLs. Verified that repeated attempts to access non-existent internal files (like stylesheets or resources) were being flagged by the firewall.
- Improved Error Handling:
Refined /errors/ to provide cleaner and more informative 503 and 404 error pages. Adjusted environment settings so local development surfaces PHP errors more transparently, rather than showing blank screens or triggering 503s.
- Firewall Analysis:
Reviewed mod_security triggers and determined that relaxing the rule would reduce security posture unnecessarily. Instead, prioritized fixing the underlying file path issue.
- Server Variable for Path Resolution:
Introduced a new server variable (e.g., $_SERVER['SEIBERTRON_ROOT_PATH']) to act as a consistent reference point for phpBB includes and templates. Updated parts of phpBB that were relying on fragile relative paths to use this new root path instead, preventing the failed file lookups.
- Targeted Updates:
Applied the path fix in specific areas like BBCode rendering and template loading where path resolution was most likely to fail. Chose not to apply this globally to reduce the risk of side effects across phpBB's sprawling architecture.
- Testing and Validation:
Tested various SEO and non-SEO forum paths, including rare features like the print view. Monitored for recurrence of 503s or blocked access.
Status: The updated logic has been deployed and is currently active. While the fix appears stable, full validation across all phpBB edge cases is impossible given its complexity and age. Users are encouraged to report any new 503 errors or access issues via screenshot or copied message for further investigation.
while the one on the right is showing up as the correct one. You can quote this post to see the difference in code between the two.
[ Click to attempt signal recovery... ]
