Closing the Support Forum
2026/09/29:
TL;DR
The support forum has closed. Use the "Contact Us" link in WP fail2ban. See the Support page for more details.
What this is about
I tried geoblocking. It was effective, but it's no longer clear that geoblocking is sufficient to avoid the mountains of paperwork required to make Ofcom happy. I hoped that someone would produce some boilerplate to simplify things, but that doesn't seem to be the case either.
The risk
As demonstrated with 4chan, Ofcom can issue fines for not doing a risk assessment. They could issue one for simply getting the assessment wrong, even if the forum never has any kind of objectionable content on it.
The risk of spam, of any kind, on the forum was tiny and easily dealt with.
The risk from bureaucracy is large and undefined.
I cannot justify volunteering to take on that risk for a free support forum. Sorry.
Support changes
There will be more posts on this in due course. For now, email support will be getting better, and will probably gain a ticketing system with a web interface.
Other changes are coming that should go some way towards filling the gap left by the forum, but sadly a full replacement isn't feasible.
The forum itself will be preserved privately, and useful discussions will eventually find their way into the documentation.