Removed lots of spam posts, now page 1 & 2 are empty

nicepaul

We removed lots of spam, but now pages 1 & 2 of the forum are empty.

To see any posts you need to click to page 3. When you add a new comment to a topic it bumps that post to page 1.

Is there a way of moving everything back up the list to page 1?

http://www.video125.co.uk/forum/

thanks,
Paul

peregrine

what was the procedure for removing the discussion?

the problem you have - is that all the discussions you "removed" have the hideme tag but weren't really deleted just hidden.

• you could have removed the content (the discussion itself) and not had the problem.

• the other thing you could do is be patient and it will work itself out.

• or you could change the DateLastComment for the discussions you want to float to the first page

  UPDATE vanilla.GDN_Discussion SET DateLastComment = '2013-05-23 01:00:00' WHERE GDN_Discussion.DiscussionID =XXX;

where XXX is the discussion you want to move.

• or you could bump the discussions.

• or you could delete the spam discussions

nicepaul

Thanks Peregrine

I don't know what the procedure for removal was, as it was another admin on the forum that did it. It may have been that the user and all their content was deleted. I can't see any options on the forum that say 'hideme', so I doubt that was used.

I've been into the 'Edit/Delete Log' section of the dashboard and checked all the discussions that were the russian spam, and then clicked "Delete forever" but that has made no difference.

The 'UPDATE' option you specified above sounds like the cleanest way to fix this, but where do I do this?

hgtonight

That would be a query executed against your db. You probably have something like phpmyadmin installed to manage your db.

I would definitely want to figure out why/how the discussions are marked hideme. From a spam perspective, making the spam invisible does nothing as to it's effectiveness. It will probably even tank your page rank since you have "cloaked" content.

What plugins do you have installed?

peregrine

I don't know what the procedure for removal was, as it was another admin on the forum that did it. It may have been that the user and all their content was deleted. I can't see any options on the forum that say 'hideme', so I doubt that was used.

view the source of the page all the discussions are there with class "hideme" thats why you don't see them

• Best Option

run this in your console

$('li').removeClass("hideme")

then you will see hidden discussions

and then just delete the discussions as admin - easiest way

---

The 'UPDATE' option would be via phpmyadmin. since you needed to ask how to do with this - I would advise backing up database if you attempt to manipulate tables manually.

peregrine

you can run javascript commands in the console with firebug and various web-developer tools.

after you've fixed it.
then use cleanser plugin by peregrine in the future to clean up things, and use botstop with peregrine modification if you aren't already.

---

I've been into the 'Edit/Delete Log' section of the dashboard and checked all the discussions that were the russian spam, and then clicked "Delete forever" but that has made no difference.

edit delete log is just that - a log of previous edits. - it won't solve your problem.

you could clear it all with cleanlog written by peregrine. - unless you see a reason to keep log.

2 1/2 peregrine plugins for suggested.

peregrine

most of your problem would be solved deleting users and contents. for the users below via the dashboard

d r a g o nb a t tt
h a j to h a j t o s

nicepaul

Ok, here's the interesting thing.

I've found out that the spam that was visible on the forum earlier was deleted correctly. What you're seeing with the "hideme" class is spam that seems to have arrived today but we didn't even know about.

Peregrine's "HideCategory" plugin is installed, and disabling it shows all the spam. However, the spam is not in a category that is hidden by the plugin, so I don't understand why it's being hidden anyway.

I've deleted those few users who were spamming the site today, and all their content, and I've made it so we have to approve all new members now rather than just them confirming their email address.

The forum currently has 1172 'unauthenticated' users (probably potential spambots who couldn't confirm their email address). Is there a way to remove them all in one go? The dashboard requires one by one.

There are also lots of 'members' (i.e. have confirmed email addresses) with 0 posts, with suspicious looking names / email addresses – is there a way to remove all of them in one go too? Otherwise the forum is open to attack from any of them despite any other barriers I now put in place, as they're already in.

I'll look into cleanser and botstop plugins now.

Thanks for all your help!

Paul

nicepaul

Cleanser looks like it will answer my questions around removing existing potential spam accounts :-)

Botstop looks good, but I think for now we'll stick to manually approving new members. Already in the 10 minutes since I turned it on there has been one obviously spammy registration, so it may be unmanageable to do it that way in terms of sheer volume, but we'll see.

peregrine

Botstop with manual registration approval - you would be foolish not to use it

http://vanillaforums.org/discussion/comment/178015/#Comment_178015

thanks for the thanks....

a few clicks on insightful (a picture is worth a thousand words) wouldn't be out of the question.

nicepaul

Thanks Peregrine. You're right, I'll give it a go.

I'm trying to install Cleanser. I've uploaded it to the right place and changed the write permissions on the file specified in the readme.txt but for some reason it's not showing up in my plugins list for me to enable it. Any thoughts?

peregrine

does the cleanser folder have the correct permissions and owner? same as all the other plugins.

should show up if installed correctly.

nicepaul

Figured it out. Some idiot was uploading it to the wrong forum installation. ;-)

peregrine

Some idiot was uploading it to the wrong forum installation. ;-)

give them a slap and a click.

good luck.