How to protect my site forum from signature link abuse!!!!!!!

Forum is a base for marketing. Also a place for spammaers. As a result my forum pages are flooded with good and bad site. I don't want to disable the signature link option. I want to provide this facility to my community members but how can I minimize the rate placing bad signature link as well.

Allowing signature link in my forum pages am I doing any harm to my site

Thanks in advance.

 

perhaps you can set a new rules that is applicable only to newly registered members.

just like here, new members are not allowed to post live links, sig links unless they reached a certain forum membership requirements and last dont allow affiliate links..

 

I'm not sure which forum software you are using, but I have used PhPbb and the plugins that require a certain postcount before you can have a sig.

 

If you are using vBulletin, I believe you can use the promotion system to allow users the ability to add links to their signature. There's also a few signature hacks that will place a rel="nofollow" tag in all outbound links over at vBulletin.org too.

Of course if you're using different forum software then you can go ahead and disregard my post...

 

Putting promotion and usergroup restrictions aside...what is so out of control about them? Do they just look tacky, do they link to sites that you don't like? Put some rules in place that limit the freedoms of signature use....here are mine for example



Signatures

* Maximum signature size is 75 pixels high by 500 pixels wide
* Maximum font size is "2"
* Three clickable links allowed per signature
* Maximum of three colors per signature (black is considered a color)
* Maximum of five lines per signature
* You MAY include links to other websites in your signature, but links to any sort of affiliate (referral) or rewards program will be removed without prior notice



If you can find a way around those rules to make signatures out of control, I'd like to hear it

 

The nofollow tag is very popular, but its not one I prefer to use myself.
I recommend allowing linkable signatures, it only ads to people's desire to come to the forum.

But limit it to 2 lines as said above, this way it won't look too out there.

 

Odds are, not many of your members will ever notice that you are adding the nofollow tag to signatures...I think there are more advantages than disadvantages to doing it

 

True, but webmaster savvy people will know if they look in the code.
If your forum isn't aimed at webmasters, then it wouldn't be a problem.

 

Even if you do run webmaster forums, it isnt going to be the end of the world...I consider the vast majority of the traffic I receive from signature links to be real, actual people - definitely not search engine listings

 

you dont need to worry about the no follow tag if your forum is not webmaster related.

 

Putting restrictions to the signature is the best idea(imo). You can limit the number of links and have a minimum number of post before they can put a live link.

 

Requiring a certain amount of posts has worked best for me in the past

 

Thats the best way to do it IMO.

 

We allow our members to have a signature after 30 posts. They can also add links to their sig, but we reserve the right to remove any link we feel is not in the best intrest to the forum.

 

Just curious, what kind of links do you feel are not to the best interest of your forum?

 

We have a dog forum and there are hundreds of backyard breeders who have websites that sell dogs. So to make it fair to everyone we don't allow "dog for sale" websites to be listed, unless they can prove that they are only breeding registered dogs.

If we allowed these links then we would degrade one of the purposes of the forum, which is to educate visitors that they should buy dogs only from the local human society or from a registered breeder.

The hardest part is filtering out these breeders in adsense. They are the highest paying advertisers, but our members get really upset when the see a backyard breeder advertising on the site. So we hve to filter them out.