can't log in and bad bot

My3Sons

I'm on a MacBook version 10.5.8 and I have had it since 2009. I have a smugmug account and have been able to access my website using Safari, without any problems until about 8 months ago. At that time, I was no longer able to login to my smugmug account using Safari. (When I tried to login, I was directed to the login screen, but there was no login box to type my account information). I consulted dgrin, and was recommended to download an older version of Firefox for my Mac (because the newer versions are not supported on my operating system). I downloaded the Firefox for my Mac and was able to login to Smugmug once again. Now, however (as of about a month ago), when I try to access my website using firefox, I get a white screen with black words at the top that say: Bad Bot

What do I do? I've got to be able to login and create some galleries for clients to view. I really don' t know what to do.

www.bellagracephotographynow.com

Thanks, Melissa

owilliams

Hi there,

It sounds to me like something (browser or operating system) is not supported. It may be ncessary for you to update your operating system so that you can use a more recent version of firefox, chrome, or safari. You can review our list of supported browsers and operating systems on our help pages here:

http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93252

I hope this helps! Let us know if the issues persist and we'll see what else we can do to help.

Best,
-Oliver
SmugMug support

David_S85

Don't know about the "Bad Bot" message, but a white and blank SM site with Mac and Safari is almost certainly due to an outdated version of Safari. Happened to me at about the same time you mention (8 mos. ago). I fixed this by downloading Chrome and haven't looked back since.

Alameth

The "bad bot" message is actually coming from the CloudFlare CDN that SmugMug uses. It isn't about outdated browsers per se, but rather about patterns in web client queries that CloudFlare has identified as being associated with bad actors, like botnets. What's puzzling is I only get this response from SmugMug, not any of the other dozens of CloudFlare-proxied sites I use daily with the same browsers. I asked the Smug Heroes for help, thinking there must be something different going on in Smug's CloudFlare implementation, but they said SmugMug is not doing anything out of the ordinary and has no control over what CloudFlare decides to block. (A kudos to the Hero who said they couldn't help me because I was using an unsupported browser -- and then investigated the problem anyway.)

My solution was to hack the User Agent string, the snippet of text that the browser sends to the server on every query that says what browser, what operating system, etc. you are running. For example, my browser's is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111107 Linux Mint/17 (Qiana) Firefox/3.6.24

WIthin Firefox, there is a "hidden" settings page called "about:config" that lets you change all kinds of stuff that "voids the warranty," including the user agent string. I changed it from "Firefox/3.6.24" to "Firefox/Developer" and, voila, no more "Bad Bot" message and everything worked flawlessly. But care has to be taken: When I tried setting it to "Firefox/4" I couldn't log in, because Smug's server started using features that only exist in Firefox 4.

Since I'm not a Safari user, I can't tell you how to tweak the User Agent string, but you should be able to google for it.

Note there are a number of open source projects that cater to users on old Macs, e.g., TenForFox and Classilla, that will allow you to run newer versions of things on an older Mac. Also note I hold nothing against Smug, CloudFlare, or the mainstream open source community for their abandonment of old Macs; I lay the blame for that squarely on the doorstep in Cupertino. (An 8 year old Mac is probably running as good as new, but you can't get software for it; an 8 year old PC is ready for the recycle bin, yet its software is still fully supported. Go figure.)

Good Luck!

Alameth

Followup: Smug changed something in the past week such that new Smug is completely non-functional with old versions of Firefox. Browsing Old Smug still works fine, but anything that relies on new Smug returns a page that's missing most of its content. This includes the login page, so it's no longer possible to login using old versions of Firefox. I don't think it's deliberate; new Smug probably just introduced some new Javascript that isn't compatible with old Firefox.

I don't have an old version of Safari to compare; you'll have to try it for yourself. But I'd expect to see similar problems. We just have to move on.

Jenuine

Greetings Alameth,

Thank you for your thoughts and information. We do attempt to keep up with the latest versions of the browsers as they change. We support the latest versions. As mentioned we do have supported browsers and operating systems. You are correct, we don't do things deliberately to make things not work, but have to keep up with things as they change. Great information regarding the hidden settings in Firefox. Appreciate the admonition to move forward. Have an Incredible Day,

Jen
Support Hero