Accessing Forums from Work

[petros]

I've gotten one report so far about these forums being blocked from work. If you are having problems, can you send me a PM or mail in game? I'd like to see the extent of the problem and see if we can narrow down the issue.

Thanks!
Petros

[Aeg]

Ah ha! My company's precious hours will not contain me! I *will* escape into a pseudo world! Productivity *will* drop.

[Hektor]

Aeg - Fight the Power!

[Earth]

Suggestion: Though I cannot access this site from work, it would be nice if I could access it from my mobile phone. Does phpBB have a mobile site or extension module in it?

[Bromen]

I had no trouble

[petros]

Ok, so it looks like some people are being blocked because for some reason http://www.genesismud.org has been listed as a "Games" category site by Websense and other filters. I did a quick search and it appears there may be two easy solutions to it, assuming that the websense filter is based on domain names only. The Genesis Admin takes no responsibility for any consequences if you are breaking policy at work though. The information provided here is solely for educational purposes.

First, you may be able to bypass the Websense filter by simply using the IP address. For Genesis, the IP address is currently 82.80.226.92, so you can try pointing your browser to http://82.80.226.92/forums and see if it works.

Second, it's possible that if we added SSL to the genesis website, it will allow you past it. We'll try and look at this option and see if it works for some folks. The site you accessed would simply be: https://www.genesismud.org/forums instead (note the extra "s" in the beginning).

If neither of these solutions work for you, there are other ways to get past filters. Tunneling, proxies, and other methods have been used by many (including myself at times) to get past firewalls. However, it may obviously affect your employment so you should be mindful of the consequences if you choose to do so.

Petros

[petros]

Suggestion: Though I cannot access this site from work, it would be nice if I could access it from my mobile phone. Does phpBB have a mobile site or extension module in it?

I looked around and it looks like there are styles that we can try. I'll give it a try in the next week or so.

[petros]

Second, it's possible that if we added SSL to the genesis website, it will allow you past it. We'll try and look at this option and see if it works for some folks. The site you accessed would simply be: https://www.genesismud.org/forums instead (note the extra "s" in the beginning).

Ok, I've enabled SSL on the web server. You'll have to confirm the certificate though.
Point your web browser to the secure site. You will get a certificate not verified error at first. You can choose to ignore this error and continue to the site, or you can install the attached certificate for your browser and the error will go away. This is a temporary certificate so we can verify whether using SSL fixes the problems for those who cannot access the forums due to Websense. If confirmed that it works, we will look into purchasing SSL certificates for our web site.

[Windemere]

Is it possible to open port 443 for connection to Genesis as well? I know it can be used as a Secure telnet port (I connect to a shell from work this way) that way I could connect to genesis from work using the Fmud client? Right now the port is blocked through my work.

Windemere

[petros]

Is it possible to open port 443 for connection to Genesis as well? I know it can be used as a Secure telnet port (I connect to a shell from work this way) that way I could connect to genesis from work using the Fmud client? Right now the port is blocked through my work.

Windemere

Port 443 is being used to serve up the web pages over SSL.