Why Are My Students Being Banned or Prevented From Signing Up?

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  fadetowhite · Member · Jan 4, 2012 at 1:34 pm

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  I teach at the Nova Scotia Community College in Dartmouth, NS, Canada. I am doing a unit on websites and we are creating WordPress blogs.

  After about 20 of my students signed up, the rest could not. It said they were banned.

  Also, every url they chose “already existed” even if they clearly didn’t.

  How can we prevent this ban from happening? I have another class tomorrow who will be doing the same thing, except there are even more students in that class.

  Thanks,

  Matt
  Blog url: http://fadetowhite.wordpress.com/

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  chrisrudzki · Member · Jan 4, 2012 at 4:51 pm

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  Howdy,

  It’s great to hear that you’re teaching students how to create WordPress blogs. :-)

  Could you possibly ask your students to register for their accounts prior to class? Perhaps at home or in a computer lab?

  Multiple registrations from the same location in a short span of time is often a sign of abusive use, and it’s possible that the registrations aren’t going through for this reason.

  I’m sorry for any inconvenience. Don’t hesitate to contact us again if you need anymore help.

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  fadetowhite · Member · Jan 5, 2012 at 2:57 pm

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  I thought that was the case.

  They all registered at home so we’re all good.

  I tried in a different lab and on different computers throughout campus yesterday and it didn’t work. It must be based on an IP range.

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  staff-blorbo · Staff · Jan 5, 2012 at 8:14 pm

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  The block is based on specific IPs. Since most schools use the same IP for the entire campus, that would pretty much block everyone.

  If you ever have to do that again, please let us know your school’s IP address a few days ahead of time, and we’ll try to prevent it.