To Racketboy, regarding the spammers here

Post by **Mozgus** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 7:06 pm

I considered PMing you about this, but I figured it might be best to openly mention it, so that other people could chime in with their own anti-spambot solutions.

I spent some time digging around the phpbb community forums looking for ways to combat the bots. The image verification methods just don't seem to work, as you might have noticed. I came across this concept and have tried it myself:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

Now my forum isn't 1/100th as active as your's and it's been pretty much dead for months, however this thing seems to have done the trick for the spambots which were completely rampant. I even have guest posting enabled now. It's a little bit time consuming to install since you need to edit like 8 files, in multiple points, to get it to work.

The mod basically adds a simple question to the guest posters and the registration screens. You should erase the questions it comes with and write your own. The spambot will never know the answer, no matter how easy the question is for a human. Hell, I don't even use a question right now. I just have it tell the poster what word to type in the box, like "confirm", and so far the spambots cant even figure out the word. Good show, I think. You might want to give this a shot, rather then the image verification. Only human spammers could get through, and you can use another mod to fight them if you want. Like use a mod that doesn't allow anyone's first few posts to contain links.

Post by **racketboy** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 8:12 pm

Funny you should mention that.
I've been toying with PHPBB hacks the last couple days and I was getting ready to implement that one.
I've already gotten rid of the ability to add a URL to a profile that hasn't been confirmed, which is the cause of tons of fake IDs created that I have to clean up on a consistant basis.

I just wish phpbb would have some of these things built in...

Post by **Saraph** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:19 pm

Yay! Someone with a solution. I check the forums atleast 20 times a day to make sure spammers don't get the opportunity to suck a member into spyware hell. Even so, there is that time when mod's need to sleep and having a security system available when the lights go off is lovely. I hope it's up and running soon. ^^

Post by **racketboy** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:27 pm

well, I have a business trip for the next two days (I still have to pack tonight), so I probably won't get to it til Saturday.
I will hopefull have a few other useful tweaks.

One I've been playing with is something that will display ads, but only to those people that aren't registered/logged in.
That way I can hopefully get a little bit more cash without having to bother all you loyal members

Post by **Mozgus** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:37 pm

racketboy wrote:I just wish phpbb would have some of these things built in...

Dont say that on their forums. They'll rip you apart. They all think that PHPBB needs to remain barebones, and that the users themselves need to spend dozens of hours installing dozens of plugins just to make PHPBB usable.

racketboy wrote:One I've been playing with is something that will display ads, but only to those people that aren't registered/logged in.
That way I can hopefully get a little bit more cash without having to bother all you loyal members

That's a dark path, dude. Ya gatta respect Anonymous. Anonymous will always make up the majority of your audience. Anonymous likes nice clean sites. Anonymous does not forgive.

Post by **CurulleanCat** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 10:47 pm

racketboy wrote:well, I have a business trip for the next two days (I still have to pack tonight), so I probably won't get to it til Saturday.

Does it involve a Taiwanese hooker?

anyways just add some security codes to the registration's setup. Just make sure people can read them.
I find my eyes are dying one me and its getting harder to tell teh number/letters............

Post by **lordofduct** » Wed Aug 23, 2006 11:40 pm

Mozgus wrote: That's a dark path, dude. Ya gatta respect Anonymous. Anonymous will always make up the majority of your audience. Anonymous likes nice clean sites. Anonymous does not forgive.

I'd have to agree... ads really turn me off from a site.

But it ain't cheap to run a website. It would help out a bit. By the way... is there a donate link around!? I've made donations to SX and I certainly wouldn't mind donating here.

Post by **Mozgus** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 12:46 am

lordofduct wrote:But it ain't cheap to run a website. It would help out a bit. By the way... is there a donate link around!? I've made donations to SX and I certainly wouldn't mind donating here.

I have no problems with donation buttons. Those are great. Me personally though, I'd never donate to a site unless I really felt like I was gaining something from it. I love this blog and all, because it's always reminding me of my forgotten games of old, and has gotten me to try out some that I completely missed as a kid. But I wouldn't donate for just stuff to read. The types of sites I would actually donate to are places like TweakGuides.com (if the site owner wasn't a pompous douche). And I wish I could donate to that Japanese kid who continues to work on SSF, the greatest Saturn emulator out there. He's accomplished so much that even Sega thought impossible.

Donate to a blog? Nah. I've seen a lot of smalltime fansites grow into large profitable domains, and I always find myself leaving, because once the admins turn the site into their day job, their articles and work quickly lose personality.

So I hope you continue to work...scratch that...PLAY with the site. If you have spent 1 hour on a project for the site, and it feels like work to you, then drop it and try something else. Chances are, if it's something that interests and entertains you as you are making it, it will do the same for us.

Post by **racketboy** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:34 am

If I put ads on, they won't be that annoying.
At least that's my goal. I'll never be as bad as most boards out there.
Maybe I if I get it to work, I'll send you guys a sample.

Post by **lordofduct** » Thu Aug 24, 2006 4:09 pm

Hey... you already have google ads from what I can tell in the blogs themselves. And they are far from intrusive. I certainly won't tell you NO on the matter as this does cost YOU money... money you may not have a lot of and I definately would ignore some ads here and there so that this site stays up and running and doesn't rag on your wallet.