Search and Display Problem Fixed

[Marrowforums]

We learned from a forum user that a mysterious problem was occurring if you searched Marrowforums for certain drug names and tried to display the resulting threads or posts.

The problem:

If you searched the forums for the word prednisone, the word prevacid, the word synthroid, or certain other drug names, then when you clicked to display the results, you got a message saying that you were forbidden from accessing the page.

Surprisingly, the problem did not occur if you searched the forums for other words, such as cyclosporine, dacogen, epogen, procrit, revlimid, or vidaza.

The explanation:

It turned out that the service that hosts Marrowforums had added a filter to try to block spam. It recognized certain drug names for which spambots might try to post ads, and blocked those accesses.

The filter was overzealous, blocking web page addresses containing drug names that are commonly discussed at Marrowforums, including prednisone.

Because of the way the filter was implemented, it blocked the display of search results, while allowing searches for the words and posts containing the words.

The correction:

We had our service provider disable the filter for Marrowforums.

Just like that, the problem disappeared!

Current status:

There should be no further problems with "forbidden page" error messages when you display Marrowforums search results.

If you encounter any problems, please let us know!