prevent spam users from posting in activity

tayholliday

Hi, I'm fairly new to using vanilla (and running a forum in general). I'm wondering how I can prevent the following spam in the activity:

Spam users are registering accounts and then posting in their profile. I'd be fine with disabling profiles all together, since they're not necessary on my forum.

thanks!

• Taylor

tayholliday

Here are some other sites which exhibit the same sort of spam:

http://forum.audiob.us/activity
http://createdigitalnoise.com/activity

x00

if you go into roles an permissions edit the roles like Member. look for the profile row, and the view column, you can uncheck this.

tayholliday

@x00, If I do that, can they still change their picture? I'd still like to have profile pictures.

aery

Go to /applications/dashboard/views/activity/helper_functions

Then replace

<?php echo $Excerpt; ?>

by

<?php if ((preg_match("/http/", $Excerpt)) || (preg_match("/www/", $Excerpt))) {$Excerpt = "<span style=\"color:red;\">Sorry, you cannot post links here."; echo $Excerpt;} else echo $Excerpt; ?>

tayholliday

@aery, will that replace all the posts with "Sorry, you cannot post links here."? Or will it stop them whilst trying to post?

aery

That will replace links with text.

To stop tem, use stop spam or akismet plugin

tayholliday

This need not be complex or require a monthly fee (akismet). How about just not showing the text field where they can enter the spam in the first place?

whu606

@tayholliday

How are they joining?

Wouldn't it be more effective to stop them joining?
BotStop (http://vanillaforums.org/addon/botstop-plugin) is a very good plugin for stopping bot signups.

tayholliday

@whu606, I'm using "Basic" registration, so I presume they get past the CAPTCHA somehow.

I'll give the BotStop a try, thanks!

whu606

@tayholliday

There's a thread on that plugin which shows a mod to make the plugin work with Registration approval.

Since I activated BotStop I haven't had any bots get through.

UnderDog

@whu606 said:
There's a thread on that plugin which shows a mod to make the plugin work with Registration approval.

Yup!

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/167592/#Comment_167592

ObamaCare_Forums

Shouldn't Captcha stop bot registrations, i.e. if I have Captcha enabled and I'm still getting some "spam" postings on my Activities page, then they must be posting that activity manually, ya?

peregrine

botstop with approval is better for stopping bot registrations, and no "then they must be posting that activity manually" not true.

9 out of 10 forum administrators say so.

Srggamer

@peregrine said:
botstop with approval is better for stopping bot registrations, and no "then they must be posting that activity manually" not true.

9 out of 10 forum administrators say so.

Vanilla forums for experience is the only one that I never get spam, MYBB Had spam always after 1 night I have over 5 thousand posts. Valina I use Botstop, captcha and that means no spam!

Shadowdare

For both MyBB and Vanilla, I found that adding questions to the registration process helped a lot in reducing the number of bots joining.

vrijvlinder

Yea and to further your filtration, you can ask a question like :

Who Cut Down The Cherry Tree?

answers:

1. Washington

2. George Washington

Adrian

Keeping my fingers crossed with this plugin. I guess my forum is going well now that I am being slammed by spam

vrijvlinder

Yea it works ,now I miss not having any applicants lol