PLEASE READ if you like tercel4wd.com forums!

GTSSportCoupe · Post by **GTSSportCoupe** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 5:21 pm

Hi All,

As you may know, we've been having some very serious spam problems with the forums recently. This has been taxing on ARCHINSTL and myself as we spend time removing in excess of 2-3 dozen spam posts per day.

You'll also notice that probably 3/4 of our 'members' are actually spammer advertisements.

The idea is to improve the forums by increasing security against spammers. We want to keep it about Tercel 4x4's.

Our forums have been generously hosted and maintained for free by a former Tercel 4x4 owner and enthusiast know as iCE - our administrator. This former owner continues to pay bills out of his own pocket, and take time out of his own schedule to maintain the website and forums.

It turns out, that in order to put a stop to all the spam, our administrator needs to put in a fair amount of his personal time to make changes to the way the forums work.

How about we show our appreciation for his work, and our support for Tercel4wd.com by donating to his paypal. You can donate anything you can afford. I'll leave it up to you. I'd recommend that you try for $10 a year. Just remember that ever dollar does count, and will help keep our site going. If you can't afford to donate, don't worry about it.

You can find the link to paypal him at the top of the screen in the forums. Simply click: 'Click here to donate to Tercel4WD.com!' Now, I know there are a bunch of you who don't use paypal. If this is the case, you can email our administrator directly to discuss other methods of donation at: ice@honda4door.com .

Thanks everyone! Lets keep this site going clean and strong.

Cheers,

Nick

icE · Post by **icE** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 7:12 am

Thanks for the donations everyone!! It's really appreciated

I know this forum serves as a great tool for everyone since there isn't another spot on the web with as much info on these cars than this forum.

I recently made some changes to the sign-up form. New sign-ups are required to put in a random code when they register to help eliminate spam-bots. I also took out the website, aim, etc. fields on initial sign-up. You can modify these later by logging in and clicking the profile button on the top.

I'm currently in the process of looking for a utility that will clean up the phpbb forum of zero-post spam members. It's a MySQL database so if anyone knows of any utilities or scripts I can install/add-on to the forums to help prevent spam, let me know and I'll implement it right away.

Thanks everyone! Message me if you need anything, or email me at ice@tercel4wd.com or ice@honda4door.com (if it gets bounced back). Thanks again!

Jon

skullone · Post by **skullone** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:21 pm

What about having signups moderated?
A person reviewing them for possible spam or something before the account is allowed to post.
Or, if it's possible, require a 24 or 48 hour window before they can make their first post?
That would stop a lot of the bots, since they dont have the logic to handle that kind of stuff (yet)

icE · Post by **icE** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:38 pm

I've bounced that idea around in my head. I think I'm going to make it so it sends an email to the user to validate. That would prevent bot's from posting as well, and it would prevent some humans since they need to provide a valid one each time they sign up.

I'm currently installing some modifications that will help kill the spam all together.

skullone · Post by **skullone** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:19 pm

Let me know if you need help or something. I've run PHPBB before on some servers, and I'm versed in Mysql/PHP/*Nix.
My job pays me to keep up with all that