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Home > FlexCMS Support Forum > User Help > General Support Requests > FORUM POSTING CAPTCHA

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FORUM POSTING CAPTCHA
Started January 31, 2007 @ 11:01am by cberks
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cberks


Posts: 63
 
FORUM POSTING CAPTCHAJanuary 31, 2007 @ 11:01am
It would be a great help if you could point me to where in which programs I would have to insert a "captcha" script to protect the forums

Regards, Chris
 
DCSun
Administrator



Posts: 625
 
January 31, 2007 @ 1:57pm
Chris,

The message posting portion of the forums is located in inc-mb-message_post.php. The inc-mb-message_compose.php file is where the message is composed, and there is also inc-mb-message_preview.php where a message can be previewed before being posted.

That said, I'm not sure captcha is really the answer for a forum. Are you getting spam on your boards? If so, feel free to post or email a link and I'll be happy to have a look and see if there's any easy fix with permissions or something along those lines.


David


FlexCMS v3.2 Has Been Released!
 
cberks


Posts: 63
 
FORUM CAPTCHAFebruary 1, 2007 @ 7:38am
David,

Being a church website www.bennscc.org we had hoped to have an open forum but have now laid a permission level on the forum. The idea of using captcha would be to have a open but safe forum. Within a week of starting the forum we had a posting (presumably automatic) from a sex site -- we will see how we get on with requiring userids and login.

Recently you mentioned that you were redoing the permission system. It would be good to have a group concept so that one could define a group of userids that had access to an item in FLEXCMS without people with "higher" level of permission also having accesses ie groups might be regarded as "peers" rather than in a hierarchy. Not sure if one could design a system that had both approaches at the same time so that one did not lose the benefits of the current hierarchical system.

Thanks, Chris
 
notdodgy


Posts: 46
 
CaptchaFebruary 1, 2007 @ 7:47am
The guest book used to get these problems.
Some new code was added and eliminated this problem.
Perhaps the answer is to adopt that solution on the forum sign up pages.
Also limit posting to signed up members only.

Roger
 

Last Edit: February 1, 2007 @ 7:48am by notdodgy
DCSun
Administrator



Posts: 625
 
February 1, 2007 @ 10:56am

Quote (cberks)

David,

Being a church website www.bennscc.org we had hoped to have an open forum but have now laid a permission level on the forum. The idea of using captcha would be to have a open but safe forum. Within a week of starting the forum we had a posting (presumably automatic) from a sex site -- we will see how we get on with requiring userids and login.

Recently you mentioned that you were redoing the permission system. It would be good to have a group concept so that one could define a group of userids that had access to an item in FLEXCMS without people with "higher" level of permission also having accesses ie groups might be regarded as "peers" rather than in a hierarchy. Not sure if one could design a system that had both approaches at the same time so that one did not lose the benefits of the current hierarchical system.

Thanks, Chris



It's unfortunate that you had spam on your message board. It amazes me how fast they find new places to inject all that garbage. Probably the saddest part, though, is that there are still some morons out there supporting them through these methods. If every single person on the internet never bought anything from a spammer the whole problem would be solved instantly. I'm not holding my breath, though!

We developed some code for the guestbook which cut down on most (all?) of the automated spam, which we can try on the forum as well if you would like.

Of course that or a captcha system doesn't entirely solve your problem, because people can still spam it manually. Requiring registrations is usually the best step for a forum, and then you get some accountability for what's being posted. We've talked about an approval process for forum postings, but the feeling seems to be that a forum should be open and available in real-time for anyone given permission to use it.

As for the permissions structure of FlexCMS, what you outlined is essentially the plan. It will be a challenge for sure, but hopefully we can come up with something that adds some extra flexibility to the current system without losing the easy of use it has.


David


FlexCMS v3.2 Has Been Released!
 
ddelor


Posts: 34
 
February 9, 2007 @ 9:50am
I am sad to report the problem is back in the guestbook. I can't tell if it is a script or not yet. One was a very long post that said it was a "blacklist" that should not be deleted. The other similar but asked if the site was sending this spam and then gave a long lists of links.

I know all the problems associated with catpchas but noticed even eBay has had to change. I have changed our guestbook to approve postings for now. I guess its a trade-off, protect everything and it gets less use or constantly watch for offending posts!

I am thankful this isn't a big open source script, now those are real targets!

Donna
 
DCSun
Administrator



Posts: 625
 
February 9, 2007 @ 12:51pm
Donna,

Sorry to hear you're still receiving a few messages you didn't want on the guestbook. It sounds like they've slowed down quite a lot from what you were getting before, though.

It's also worth noting that even a captcha won't stop spamming from happening, it just stops the automated ones. Without an approval system there's nothing to stop people from coming and doing it manually, no matter what you do.


David


FlexCMS v3.2 Has Been Released!
 

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