Spam problem in a guestbook

ulruc

Hello everyone. Since a few months, I have tried to fix that dam problem that I have with my PHP website. And since it never work really well, I've decided to ask here then :

Every one and a while, my guest book is spammed by wandering bots who like to put porn links in it. And since I block some kind of text from appearing (like links), it make a real bad mess that come big really fast.

And since a lot of the visitors on my website are minors, that's not really great.

I need some help to fix that problem.

Here is the link for my guestbook :

http://www.ulruc.frih.net/livreor.php

Yeah, all my website is in french since it's my first langage. If someone konw what can I do to solve my problems, I would be really happy to make my website' guestbook sane for kids...

{name here}

Block <a href= and [url= to sever much of the spam.

However, I don't believe there's any reason to have a guest book. A forum works just as well, if not better. Flatforum will do what you need it to do and block the spam caused by spambots.

ulruc

I will think about that and see if it can help me.

On my ancient website (before I come on Frihost), I got to use a forum made by Phpbb.

But since not a lot of people were using it, I deleted it and put up a guest book.

Maybe a forum could really help.

Thanks...

littlegiant

What guestbook script are you using? It should have a means to filter out certain terms and codes (otherwise it's not a very good one). Also I would suggest starting a blog (using Wordpress) to replace your guestbook. It would look nicer and it will allow you to approve or delete comments before they get posted. It also has some anti-spam plugins that work really well.

cavey

If you can code your self, you should add a simple question (not mathematical) that all of your human visitors should know. F.ex. the name of your country. Since the spambots cannot generate an answer from that question, they will fail to add the guestbook-entry. I use it on my blog, and have never received any comment-spam.

illegalhost

Hi ulruc, i think that guestbooks are quite a waste of time for anybody. I don't see any need for it? But since you would want them in your website, then it's ok. Personally i have never encountered spams as such mentioned. So i'm sorry but i cannot help you. But my advise is to dump the guestbook. It is so ancient. Your (or in this case, ANY) website doesn't look modern with a guestbook in it. My personal comment there. Wink

outofnicks

I've been playing around with a PHP script package called CuteNews which is really versatile and can be used in many different applications. Just for the fun of it, I set it up as a guestbook on one of my pages.
http://www.kengrunke.frih.net/webdev/comments.php

Cutenews is easy to install, needs no SQL database and uses 600 kb on the server. You use includes to insert content into any page on your site you wish, setting up categories which can be specified in the includes. I have no affiliation whatsoever with CN, just a happy user. Link is at the bottom of my "guestbook" page.

Dragate

You could do a verification of bots/real people.

For example, when you go to download something from megaupload, to prevent bots, they have a verification key you have to put in that's an image of numbers and letters.

Go to google and search up how to make one of those. PHP is easy to make one of those.

You don't need to make it really, really long. Just make it something around 3 letters or just 3 numbers, easy for the minors to type before posting something Very Happy

.

zanetine

make it a thumbrule that whenver you are making a form on your website, whether its a signup form, contact form, or feedback / review form you should secure it with capthca image verification to differentiate between a real user ans spambots.

if you can not implement this verification , have services of any professional to do it for you, or leave the idea of putting form on your page if you dont want to suffer later on.

Aredon

Put up a captcha on your guestbook prior to allowing entries.
You may also be interested in a recaptcha.net account.

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