Recent Topics

1 Mar 30, 2006 23:44    

OK, I have been using b2evolution for one of my sites - a book review site- for several months, and the spam problem is absolutely, positively, HORRIBLE. First and foremost, how on earth can we not have a simple method of turning comments off permanently? I removed the comments PHP code from my main php file and I still am getting spam. Of course nobody sees it, but I'm getting the million comment notification emails.

Blacklisting is useless... they use millions of domains. The work involved to keep spam from my b2evolution blog is just not worth the time anymore, sad to say because it is a great blogging system otherwise.

Now, I use Wordpress on 2 of my other sites, and Serendipity on another couple. I do not have this problem on either site. Sure, I get spam, but it's managed much better and easy to block certain things like proxies, links, etc.

My question is, how come b2evolution wasn't created to better fight spam? I am just wondering, as it is a HUGE problem that has caused me much grief. I am switching web hosts over the weekend for the site in question and I will not be reinstalling b2evolution... I simply don't have time to clean up fourteen million spam comments and emails every day. :(

2 Mar 31, 2006 00:09

So you're first post is a bitch session. How nice. ByeBye.

3 Mar 31, 2006 00:13

Am I not allowed to voice my opinion? The spam thing is very upsetting to me and I've spent hours and hours of wasted time. I just wanted you guys to know the reason I'm not going to use b2evo again -- maybe they'll enable better spam control in the future. (I hope so- it's a great blogging tool).

4 Mar 31, 2006 00:14

But she's right and I feel really sorry myself for all the time that gets wasted by it. Spam is indeed a very huge problem at the moment.

However, with "Phoenix" and the plugin system we'll address that. I've already wrítten some Antispam plugins for it (DNSBL, Captcha, Akismet) and it should be darn easy for contributors to provide new ones.

We're working hard on the next release.

5 Apr 01, 2006 04:09

This is so obvious, but just in case: did you be sure to click "Request abuse update from centralized blacklist!" on your admin console's antispam tab?

I don't see a lot of spam myself, (but I just started this site this month). I, too, would like a captcha. I'm thinking of drumming up my own sentience test and editing the PHP code to send the user through that first, then to the comments form. But given that my experience with PHP = 1&1/2 days, and I have other projects...

It helps that I do a lot of graphics, and with a tool like POVray, I could even write a script that produces stacks of distorted text pictures, but have no idea where to go from there. How to write the PHP code so that my program knows the correct answer, but a bot couldn't cheat by peaking at the source? I've never done my own encryption before.

I'll think about it in the morning. Sleep and coffee will help!

6 Apr 01, 2006 08:37

Right or wrong, for a first post to be a totally inaccurate complaint is lame.

There are not millions of domains that need banning. There are slightly more than 4000 banned by the central system, and anyone can reduce or increase that number significantly. And so what! If your first post is to say "this sucks so I'm changing" you signed up to bitch and that is PATHETIC. What kind of person only communicates when they've got something to whine about? Bleh. I've tinkered with a lot of other software and have never once joined their forums just to say "your product sucks". If it doesn't work for me I don't use it - no biggie.

I use the antispam central list, my 'turing test' hack, and have trackbacks turned off. I think I have about 10 keywords blocked as referers in my .htaccess, and am about to turn that off because I don't think I need it. I don't suffer spam, so anyone buried by it simply needs to get (a) some information and (b) ahead of the spam curve. It's not hard, and if you ask you get answers, but if you kick and scream like a baby you get slapped. Oh freakin well.

8 Apr 01, 2006 11:46

All a moot point, her blog is running wordpress, atleast the one I was able to find.

skinnygirl77, I do reccomend you update that teen blog to wordpress 2.x. wordpress 1.5.2 has a cpl well-known exploits that make you a target for something much worse than some spam.

good luck to ya!


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