New antispam hack

Just added a new hack to eliminate spam in this forum. From now on users with less than 20 posts will not be able to post links.

Hope this will help us. I suppose it wont be the best feature for our new real members, but I think it is the only way to deal with spammers.

Please let me know what do you think of this, and feel free to post your own recommendations.

UPDATE:

The previous hack worked, but as many spammers posted more than 20 posts to overcome this I've added a new one. From now on users with less than 100 posts will not be able to add a signature or a website in their profile. Also I've removed sigs/sites from profiles of users that have less than 100 posts.

I think that is a normal solution for new members. The most important thing is to get off the "spam this forum" list.

Serious members will accept that they can't post links.

Maybe an idea to create a "membeproup" in SMF with more abilities, people need to ask the admin to get a member of this group...

EDIT: btw try to get akismet for SMF, in my forum spam posts get hidden automatically! Sure I don't have a lot of spam (like here) but it works great :)

Hope it will be effective..

Did you ever look into locking old threads or manually locking old ones that are being brought back to life for no good reason?

Can you make signatures not editable until the 200 posts are made? I've seen a number of forums where the option just isn't available until the post count is met.

I didn't like it but one of the writers forums wouldn't even let you post a thread without a high enough post count. Not really a fan of that as I signed up on that forum so I could ask a question only to find I have to make a bunch of posts first.

Michelle, the signature edit thing is the next I am going to apply. I've also thought to auto lock old threads or maybe allow only members with high postcount to post on them.

@Olaf I will also try to check the Akismet hack

At the moment I am very busy with a new project, so I don't really have time to catch up, but I will the soonest possible. Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Nick,
The spam becomes very annoying, I remember me that I read every new post at least once a day but this is a long time ago...

Even my own post (or from other real members) getting spammy comments with signature links to viagra sites or other spam links. At the moment I noticed those links, I left already the site

This is a good meter although it has one fault...

The newcomer can't quote someone else's post unless he reaches 20 posts...

But it is a good meter

+1 from me...

@geobak I will check that

@Olaf you are right man. Even I can't follow the forum. I will eliminate this the soonest possible.

After all I don't really care about the growth of this forum. I prefer the real company we had here ;)

Find some easy way remove spam posts, in bbpress a post is marked as spam and automatically hidden (the same for delete). This way the database will grow but the spam is removed with a single mouse click.

checking if a new thread or post is copy pasted..something like copyscape.com

Today I've woke up early to do another modification to the board. From now on users with less than 100 posts wont be able to add a signature or a website in their profile.

Hope this will work better. I am sure that it wont work the best way in terms of promotion to the forum, but as I said I don't really care. Webdigity is not a DP wannabe and I prefer quality members and friends of a forum filled with 1 sentence posts.

Later I will try to see if I can automatically lock all old threads.

Great!
I think that one of the reason why my own forum doesn't have so much spam attempts (I don't have any signatures)

hehe

Having no sigs is a good way to eliminate spam, but I really don't want to "harm" our loyal members in order to fight spam. Here at webdigity the problem with spam is a viral post about do-follow forums that posted on several blogs. Also I realised that we got spammed a lot by an Israeli "seo" company and several forum posting spam companies from India.

Anyway hope this one will keep spammers away, and things will get back to normal soon :)

Another update: Locking old threads was very easy so now all threads with a last reply of 6 months ago or more are now locked.

If you check my permissions now we should be prepared to fight all the already posted spam

That's the next one to do, but as it is an SMF bug (or a bug I made while modding this site ;) ) it could take long. I will check this later (now I have to work on other projects)

BTW if you want the auto lock feature in your SMF forum check this post

hehe, my forum is not very active and I think I will shut it down after the first year (it's a forum I created for my gladiatus guild and I stopped almost with playing)

nice thread

I really appreciate your efforts. You can also laid some time duration of some days before a member can post a link.

Good, It should be that because new members with out any replies should not be allowed to post the links.

Every one needs to obey the rules of forums .

Everyone needs to obey the rules .