Author: Gizmo (James of VNC Web Design)

Requirements:

• Valid UBB.Threads 7.0 install and license
• PHP5+, PHP4 is not supported.
• You will need an API Key from Stop Forum Spam.

About:
This modification will allow you to check your users (via the "Edit User" function in the Control Panel) and new signups (via the "Registration Queue") against the Stop Forum Spam databases.

When a spammer is identified a Red/Bold ! will display next to the field, clicking this ! will allow you to view the associated data on Stop Forum Spam.

As of v0.3 we're assuming that you have an API key and you want to submit spam; you'll likely want to put your API key in (both) the language files (admin/public) when you upload them to your server.

Changelog:
v0.1 - Initial Build
v0.2 - Fixed an issue with users having 0 posts throwing an error in the CP on the Edit User screen.
v0.3 - Overhauled the addon making it a true modification with Language File support. Also added it so that users triggering the signup check will be automatically submitted to Stop Forum Spam.
v0.4 - I believe I fixed the "downtime" issues, whereby if the validation server is down, people where unable to register.

Demo:
CP - Edit User Page - What's whown on the edit user page.
CP - Registration Queue - What's shown on the registration queue page.
CP - Report Spam - Option to report a spammer to the database.
Public - Registration Detected - Registration page, detected a spammer based on their IP address or EMail address.

NOTE: StopForumSpam.com only allows 5k 10k 20k lookups per day; thus, you should refrain from attempting to implement this code on pages which would quickly hit this limit (such as adding searches for all types of data on the search users page).

API Key: Go here and sign up on their forums, then go here once logged in and generate a key for "yourdomain.tld". This API key needs to be added to both of the language files in the modification archive (one in the "english" folder, and its subfolder of "admin").

Just an FYI regarding the new "auto submission" feature when an email is matched; I initially wanted to do this for IP matching as well, but figured that since most ISP's divvy a dynamic IP that it wasn't really worthwhile to auto submit for them at this time, but it's totally doable if you'd like to.

Just heard from Paul at Stop Forum Spam and not only have they updated their limit to 10k from when I wrote up the initial mod, they upped the limit again to 20k!

So, I'll be adding some information on adding the lookup to the member manage listing itself for those of you who'd like to use it. Just be mindful of the 20k limit, if you have a ton of members you still might not want to run it...

We're also now added to the Mods and Plugins page at Stop Forum Spam as well.

Thanks for this... I am hoping it helps cut down the morons spamming our forums...

well, if you keep track of how many you had before hand; keep us updated on how many you get now

Have you seen a drop off Gizzy?

Loads, I used to have daily drive by trolls (2-3, nothing too big, but LOTS of posts) and now I'm lucky to see one a week...

I mean, I don't have as busy of a site as most of you, but we do have a decent PR value (4+) so we get a lot of pop in look around traffic .

v0.4 added to the first post.

I've installed the full MOD (Thanks Gizmo).. and now I'm breathlessly awaiting my first Spammer. (Had 4 or 5 last week.)

I have some questions (that may become obvious later to me) - but, if I look at the Demo's above, it appears that

1) known Spammers are REJECTED and can't register in the Forum. (from a pool of 21 million!!! Wow)....

2) So how does the Edit USER page show a spammer? or why?

3) or how does a USER Registration QUEUE work? How does a Spammer make it that far?

Thanks... I've wondered about this for MONTHS and now I'm eagerly waiting to see my first "customer"!!!!! Ha ha.

I just implemented it - thanks to Gizmo for it. We have just been deluged with spammers.

I just did a check of the last set of registrations.

valid - 76
spammers - 68

So nearly half of all incoming registrations were going to start spamming us. This will make it much easier to stop them.

For some reason I am not seeing any note of their spam status on the main registration queue page. I have to click on their name to get to the detail page - and on that page I do see the red exclamation point by the email address or IP address (or usually both) to show they are a spammer.

Any thoughts on why I don't see that detail on the main registration queue page? I did make all the changes as instructed (or at least I thought I did).

While I was in viewing the source of the registration queue page I noticed that the code to make the "approve / decline" radio buttons had a bug - it was adding slashes before the two quotes around the checked default button for "no change". So I removed them in my code. You might want to check that that is in the master code.

Can you list the names of the pages that you're looking at?

I only see the red exclimation mark if I look at a specific user: /admin/showuser.php

Yes.

Users won't make it there, if they're flagged they won't even see the registration screen. Adding code elsewhere isn't recommended as you only get so many lookups per day, and on a busy board it'll end up hitting this limit if added to more sections than the default code supplied.

Thanks... I understand it now... And it's as simple as it seems. Since they can't get registered, they won't show up anywhere.

I sure hope Ver 7.6 (8.0?) has this included.

It won't since it requires an API key so has to pretty much remain a mod/plugin...

I'm happy to report that I just rolled the code in on my wineintro.com forum and it seems to be working smoothly there too. So that's two forums now running the code and seeing a reduction in spammers.

I only got one or two a week in this forum - fairly low traffic - but still every bit helps.