Banning users is useful for when you don't want one or more people to ever again be able to access your site.

There are three ways of placing bans within Theia: by banning the specific IP address, by banning group of IP addresses, or by banning an entire country.

Banning an IP address

To simply ban a known IP address, navigate to "tools", and look for the "security settings" group of tools, and click the one reading "ban / unban IP address" (admin tool 047). Only the IP address field needs to be filled in, but if you are allowing other users to place bans, then the second field, reason for banning this IP address (optional) is helpful in giving others some sort of justification or reasoning behind the ban.

Similarly, you can also use the IP banning tool to ban a group of IP addresses. Let's say one of the users you are trying to get rid of has a dynamic IP address, which makes banning a specific IP address frustrating. In such a situation, you could ban an entire group of IP addresses, by writing an IP address and the wild card character like this:

255.1.*.*

Or, you could do:

255.1.1.*

You could also use the wild card character to ban any or all of the four segments of an IP address, but practically, it only makes sense to use the latter two.

Banning an entire country

And finally, you can ban an entire country from using your site. This is done by using the "ban / unban a country" tool (admin tool 049) - also in the "security settings" group of tools. Here you need to select the country you wish to ban from the selection menu, and optionally, write in a reason for banning the country.

Please note that the banning mechanism functionality mentioned here works through Theia directly, and does not effect the web server's configuration (such as any .htaccess file).