Forums now blocked by LEA

Everything seems to be fine here now. I'm at one of the primary schools at the moment, but it's in the same 'cloud' as the secondary school I'm based at, and I'm using the same proxy so I guess either someone else in Sandwell has requested for it to be unblocked, or someone that works for them didn’t like being blocked.


I just did some testing. It seems that "edugeek.net" is infact blocked; however, "www.edugeek.net" is not blocked. I always knew netsweeper was bad and let the kids get around it easily... But that's just stupid!

We have a example of blocking here at BETT so I will be developing a fix very soon. Hopefully will be live tomorrow for you all :)

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Originally Posted by sidewinder

Yeah that doesnt surprise me, West Sussex use LGFL/Atomwide as well don't they?

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Oh, God, yes.

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Originally Posted by ittech

Its pretty amazing that you cant do it, our school would grind to a halt if I couldn't unblock sites immediately.

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I know, its ridiculous, and I can see why some people here cant believe it.

It USED to be better than this, there was a clear system to either block or unblock a site, and although it still had to go through someone, the request was normally granted as long as it was sensible. But since they upgraded their filter and support site, its been a complete nightmare. Theres a student policy and a staff policy which can be applied to specific IP's. Some things such as forums can be unblocked on the staff policy, but thats it...NO individual sites can be unblocked anymore, just a few select categories.

That is, until they provide the tools to allow individual schools to customise their filtering, these were supposed to be put in place to co-incide with the filter upgrade, but nearly a year later, we have a more restrictive filter and NO tools...and all we get when we ask is 'its being discussed'

Its a disgrace that we pay for this pathetic service, but Ive not heard of any other schools complaining. Perhaps thats because there have been no proper WAN meetings for a year either, so no-one can even air their grievences

If I had the authority to make the decision, I would withdraw at the first possible oppourtunity, get ADSL in and do it ourselves. We're paying god knows how much for a service that the IT staff, teachers, and students all get annoyed with

Can users please test /frms/ as the url for the forums. Please let me know what you does not work. Frontpage links will not work yet and neither will chat.
If you confirm that gets around of a lot of issues I will write the rule for the chat page.

Cheers

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Originally Posted by ZeroHour

Can users please test /frms/ as the url for the forums. Please let me know what you does not work. Frontpage links will not work yet and neither will chat.
If you confirm that gets around of a lot of issues I will write the rule for the chat page.

Cheers

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Am I doing something wrong? I get a 404 Not Found page.

http://www.edugeek.net/frms

There is a difference between /frms and /frms/

The prior (which probably won't be subject to the rewrite rule) returns a 404, the latter a 500 server error.

Sorry about that, the joy of mod_rewrite :)
Try www.edugeek.net/frms/index.php

Good luck ;)

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Originally Posted by ZeroHour

Sorry about that, the joy of mod_rewrite :)
Try www.edugeek.net/frms/index.php

Good luck ;)

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After I turned the computer off last night I thought about doing that but couldn't be bothered to turn the computer back on again.

The site isn't blocked here, surprisingly, so I can't test it for you.

The new url does work here, thankyou :D

Lets hope they dont block this one..seems unlikely though

If your LEA/RBC are inept enough to fail to remove sites from their blacklists, it's unlikely they have the wit to add them either.

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Originally Posted by crc-ict

Situation is the same on Websense with West Sussex Grid for Learning. Exactly the same - worked for about half an hour this morning, then blocked. Also, old forums worked fine.

You can indeed have unfiltered IPs, (well, 'Technician' filter which allows useful stuff but still keeps the more 'exotic' stuff at bay) which works fine if you only work in one school and have your own PC. I work in nine, and have to grab whatever computer I can!

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I to have had it blocked in ie since we came back after xmas but it worked in ff until thursday /friday. I have since added a rule on the atomwide support site to alow this site through as an exception.

Cool, I am going to work on a script to autodetect blocking and rewrite the urls so users can easily get into the forums.

Cheers for the feedback ;)

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Originally Posted by DSapseid

I have since added a rule on the atomwide support site to alow this site through as an exception.

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How do you do that?? Pretty sure we dont have the ability, which seems weird as we have the same provider?

@ sidewinder - our lea/atomwide give us full control over what sites we do see/dont see if we fill in appropriate forms saying that it is at our risk etc. The only categories that are permantly blocked are adult and chat i think!

It might be worth speaking with atomwide or with your lea it schools helpdesk.