Lots of Thread Questions With No Solutions!

[Chris_C]

Follow up:

Here is a person who's tested a combination of plugins for vBulletin, that work amazingly well at eliminating forum spam in his vBulletin sites.

ZERO new spam registrations!

I’ve now been running this plugin for about two weeks, and the RBL New User Registration check has prevented over 200 spam registrations. Registrations that would otherwise have made it through all of the aforementioned checks, since the RBL plugin collects the username, which means the registrant had to have gotten to and completed the registration form.

Over 200 spam registrations blocked, and approximately 10-15 total false positives (which could probably be remedied by removing a few of the more aggressive RBL servers from my list.) I can firmly state that the 10-15 false positives, compared to the 60 spam registrations a day I was getting, falls into the win column. Whitelisting an IP takes just a few seconds, so its not a big deal.

The ultimate outcome – these plugins combined have, for now, allowed me to turn off manual registration approval completely – with ZERO spammers making it through the blockades. My users are happier, and I’m happier.

I feel these would help Sugar forums immensely, and should at least be tried out for 30 days to see...

Managing registration spam in vbulletin | Snipe.Net

If you need help installing these in the Sugar forum - I am available.

[morrighu]

HAH! I was answering a question. Because I posted some links out to some pages that explain Unix file permissions, directory permissions, and the chmod and chown commands in an excruciating level of detail I didn't feel like addressing myself, I find that I am now BACK in moderation-hold.

[alexcf]

Yeah, I'm also on Moderation hold, or might even be banned actually! Whenever I try and subscribe to a post, it tells me I'm banned!

[Chris_C]

Yeah, I'm also on Moderation hold, or might even be banned actually! Whenever I try and subscribe to a post, it tells me I'm banned!

You're a real user, so you should ask the mods to fix your status back to normal.

On the old version of the forum software, the mods had to configure automatic moderation of a user's first 10 posts, and even later posts, based on potentially unwelcome content.

All of that restriction was mainly due to spam-bots that were successfully auto-registering in the forum, and auto-posting - everything from fake pharmaceuticals, to spam SEO links.

The new version of the forum software seems to have defeated auto-registration by spam-bots, so the posting of spam problem is much more manageable - probably close to non-existent.

[graphics]

But then you have to wait for mods to enable all your posts, which in my case takes days. (this post probably took 3 to be approved)

[Chris_C]

But then you have to wait for mods to enable all your posts, which in my case takes days. (this post probably took 3 to be approved)

You have > 10 posts now - just broke over the line with 12 posts - so you should be good for instant posting.

It must've been a really horrendous onslaught of spam-bot registrations and auto spam posts, for the forum mods to resort to the first 10 posts manually approved....