Hey, I own ( www.go4expert.com ) which is growing like thick and fast and so I would like to know which is the best thing you have done to keep the spam out and manage the forum well. Initially when it had few posts I used to get myself notified of each post and use to see the emails manually but then this method went out of my control. Then I started using SpamBuster which keeps spam away but then manual spam and self promotion cannot be ruled out. Now I have started using New Posts feature which Displays all the new post from my past visit but then I need to visit each thread and see if there is any spam. I would like to know what is your best bet in managing large communities. BTW its a vB forum. Thanks Shabbir
my forum has about 16,000 members and gets about 15,000 visitors per day.. A few things i do are: 1) require sign-up and email verification before allowing posts 2) use "BadBehavior" - it blocks spammers, scrapers, auto-bots, etc 3) manually block IP's of fake accounts 4) use spam 'filters' to flag any URL not posted by a known/trusted member 5) use volunteer moderators to weed-out the junk <-- probably the most important
I don't think you're going to be able to totally control the spammers, if you think you can then you will go crazy. Most members don't like to see spam so try and encourage them to report the post if they do see threads like that. Create a forum in your admin area for reported posts to be created so that mods and admin can see them in the new posts screen instead of just an email. I think you're worrying about it too much...so what if someone creates a spam post, if you gave good mods and good members you will find them and remove them quickly. Then you can take action against the member, i.e. ban ip, email address, etc. That's my take on it anyway.
oh yes, forgot to add the "report as spam" option that members can use.. and to clarify my post - we have different levels of "trust" for our members. a brand-new (untrusted) member can not post any URLs without the post being flagged for moderation.. a 'premium' (paid) member can post a few URLs before being flagged, and fully "trusted" members can post almost whatever they want..
Thanks and as of now I have been able to keep the spam out completely but I need to learn to live with it and get rid of them as and when found.
The first thing I recommend is you update your forum to the latest version of VBulletin. At the bottom of the home page it says "vBulletin Version 3.0.3." Is that correct, or is that done on purpose? Some forum owners will change that "Powered by" to the wrong version number to deceive hackers. After you get updated to the latest version, there are some modifications you can install off vbulletin.org. One is "Read Books stop spam." This makes the member type a random word that you predefine during the registration process. One of the problems with email activation I have ran into, hotmail, msn and gmail block the activation emails. I finally had to turn email activation off because I was loosing so many new members. To help get rid of spam after they have signed up at your forum, take a look at this modification - One-touch Spam Ban and Cleanup. Just click one link on the members profile, then click ok - the script then bans the member, adds their IP address to the banned IP list, deletes all post by the member and deletes all private messages sent by that member. Instead of having to delete a dozen spam post one at a time, that script will do it for you. This also works well for members sending out PM spam, as it deletes the PM.
No its not for deceive but then I am not willing to update because it has been tested by hackers and other stuff and what you are talking about is 2 click banned but I have coded myself 1 click banned and stuff like that. The problem is not getting rid of spam but I need to see each post if its a spam or not and when you have 100's of posts in a day it outta difficult
If you think its difficult with hundreds of post a day, wait until you get thousands. Currently, my forum gets around 1,100 post a day. For July, 2008 my site got over 33,000 post. Some days the forum gets around 1,300 post, while other days it only gets 900 post. When you reach that amount of traffic or more, do you still plan on looking at every post? It would be impossible, even if you spent one second per post, you are still talking about hours every day reading through your forum. If you are trying to put yourself between your members and the forum, you will just slow things down. One forum I visited, the moderators had to approve every post until you reached around 10 or 15. Needless to say that forum does not get very much traffic.
I run a large community and I find the best way is to have your members on your side. A lot are unaware of or do not know what the 'Report' feature does and hence do not use it. I've found that introducing members to this feature, adding it to the rules and also to the forum template itself makes checking the posts far easier.
Yes I am afraid of that and so wanted people like you to advice. I am now planning to get more mods in.
I think the big one is forcing users to validate their accounts. Sure it can be a pain for some users, but it does help a lot reduce un wanted spam/junk. Mark