Invalid Email Address

[troutinator]

Since there are so many email domains banned from signing up, like yahoo.com, I think it would be wise to modify the sign up form to list these as well as to give it a better error than "Error 578: You do not have permissions to access this forum." Which is as you can see far from indicative. Atleast this post will show up if people search the forums for help.

Keywords: can't sign up, trouble signing up for forum, error 578

 

[olds]

How many accounts do you need?

 

[troutinator]

Just one. I just signed up today. I was mentioning this to help future people who want to sign up and have the same problem I did. The banned domains are fairly popular so I thought it would be useful information to include in the sign-up process as opposed to forcing people to go digging around for a solution.

 

[olds]

Hmmm, just seemed odd that someone's first post has to do with the search.
Welcome.

 

[troutinator]

Thanks for the welcome.

I've been reading a ton of posts the past few days so when I finally decided to get an account I was slightly annoyed at having trouble signing up. As for the "search", I was merely mentioning that since the first thing I tried when I got an error message was to search the forums to see if anyone had addressed the issue. So I threw in the keywords I used in hopes that if someone else attempts a search like mine they will find this and know instantly how to get there account to these excellent forums.

 

[olds]

Search 578 now
<shiftyeyes>

 

[troutinator]

Hmm . . . 2 results, one of which would point you in the right direction IF you knew about the email being the issue. However, if you are just signing up they wouldn't be much help. As for why this isn't indexed, my guess is that the search indexing runs on a cron job or something. Or it doesn't search message bodies by default. If so, then I will just have to make a new better titled thread. Although really I was hoping some Admin might see fit to actually get the signup form changed to reflect the fact that certain email domains are banned.

 

[bruceb]

All of that information can be found under the FAQ Tab

3. If you receive a message saying your E-Mail address is banned, you can contact the forum moderator to question why. Below is a list of E-mail services that were banned due to abuse, and will not be re-activated upon user request.

AOL
Bigfoot
Excite
Gotoworld
Hotmail
Nightmail
Whitehouse
Yahoo
All domains operated by portofevil.com, aka evilemail.com

4. In addition to the above, all of AOL's system is banned from the forums; this includes their IP addresses. This means that even if you sign up with a different E-mail address, you will not be able to post if you connect to the internet using their service.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: troutinator
Thanks for the welcome.

I've been reading a ton of posts the past few days so when I finally decided to get an account I was slightly annoyed at having trouble signing up. As for the "search", I was merely mentioning that since the first thing I tried when I got an error message was to search the forums to see if anyone had addressed the issue. So I threw in the keywords I used in hopes that if someone else attempts a search like mine they will find this and know instantly how to get there account to these excellent forums.

You read a ton of posts but not the FAQ?

 

[troutinator]

Well sir, if you read the FAQ of every forum you dig around in I applaud you. Frankly I see no need to read an FAQ till I have a question, as one forum is pretty much like another. I'm more likely to read the Sticky topics with posting guidelines. If you will note, I did read the FAQ once I had a question, "Why can't I sign-up for an account? What does this error mean?" Also, the FAQ is not indexed by the search engine. I had assumed such and would hence not have needed to read the FAQ separately, but obviously I was in error. Now, the real issue is, why is such important information for signing up not on the sign-up page? Furthermore, the FAQ actually does not link banned email domains to trouble signing up, merely to getting an "invalid email" PM. Also, if you will note, I mentioned the particular error message "Error 578" which is not mentioned in the FAQ as being caused by a banned email domain. So, really I fail to see what you are getting at as, A) I did end up reading the FAQ once I had a question, and B) the FAQ only indirectly answered the question by deductive reasoning.

edit: spelling

 

[allisolm]

Troutinator, IMO you are correct in much of what you say. "Error 578" is a poor message to indicate that you have used a banned email address. You get that same message for a number of things and digging out the real reason can be a problem. The FAQ mentions receiving a "a message saying your E-Mail address is banned", and such a message does not exist. It's been that way for years and no one seems to deem it enough of a problem to change it.

If you read the stickied "How to Search" thread, you will see that your keywords are useless due to the fact that search does not look at the body of posts and hasn't for a year or so - although they say they are working on fixing it.

A good thread to diagnose/solve some common problems is search rig profile email signature sig avatar poll remove sidebar menu, 578.

Hope this helps.