HELP NEEDED ASAP ABOUT CHAT FORUM RUNNING

[muddyjames]

Please can someone who knows about chat forums pm me ASAP please as I run a caravan club for 18-35 year olds and we are getting bombarded with posts from guests putting links on to cheap cigarettes, porn, usa homes, cheap flights and a whole other load of stuff.

I have tried to make it so only registered uasers can post but the site keeps telling me it is in debug mode. I am not very technicaly minded and need some urgent help as me and my other members have now deleted over TWO HUNDRED posts JUST TODAY and they are still at it.

the site is www.youngcaravan.co.uk if any one wants to have a look at what they are doing. DO NOT CLICK on the links as they are all virus infected too.

Cheers in advance

James

[Budgie]

I've just had a look at your forum and I can't see any of these adverts, where are they?
Is it the forum itself thats being effected or the Chat Room?
When I clicked on the chat room all I got was a blank page, nothing came up.

You've got the forum set to accept new posts from anyone, including people not logged in (Guests). Is there anything in the Admin side that'll allow you to set permissions for users? Like Admin: get to do everything, Mods: can edit posts but not change things on the admin side. Memebers can only post and start new topics & Guests: Can only post & start new posts in one section. You should also be able to hide sections from non-members.

If you can do this then title the area the guests can post in something like "Forum Questions" or "Guests Area" so that the web-bots that search out forums to bump this rubbish can't find you.

We use Invision Free for a couple of forums and never had the problem with the web-bots, maybe worth a look if the problem gets too much?

[petergalileo]

1. keep phpbb up to date
2. If you want it so guests can post, get the guest posting confirmation mod from phpbb, it stops spambots posting by requiring guest posters to type 5 letters in.
3. run an Rss feed on it and monitor all new posts, when they arrive, add the first part of the ip address of the poster to the ban control. eg if the spammer has an ip of 111.222.333.444 then add 111.222.*.* to the ban list.
4. Add certain words to the word censor list, words like viagra, ciallis, porn and some swear words, get the word censor thing to replace them with the word SPAM.

Thats what I do on my PHPBB and I still get spam posts, not a lot you can do about it, even if you remove the facility for guests to post you will still get it from spammers who register first !

[muddyjames]

The reason you couldnt see the links Peter is because it was getting so bad that I couldnt delete their posts as fast as they were putting them on so I have temporarily locked every single thread which has stopped them for now and also the number or guests has dropped dramaticaly.

I have put loads of swear words and the main words they use in their links into the word sensor but unfortunately their links never come up the same twice!

I have been monitoring their ip addresses too and it seems like they log on and off the net and keep on having different ip addresses every hour.

How do I keep phpbb up to date? One thing I would love to do is set it so nobody can post anything unless they are a member. I have found that mods can post in locked links so if it comes to it I will make a new type of person say posters and give them a right to post but wont be able to mod or anything else. That way I can lock all new threads and only members I have authorised can post. It will prob put new members off though.

[petergalileo]

Its easy to stop non registered members posting.

Go into your admin panel.
Click on Forum permissions.
make sure its in advanced mode.
pick a forum, then set the permissions for each action.

The actions are :-
View, Read, Post, Reply, Edit, Delete, Sticky, Announce, Vote, Poll create, Post Files, Download Files .

You then select the permission for each action.  Permissions are all, mod, reg admin.  

At the moment "post" will be set to any - ANYone can POST
Set it to REG so only registered member can post.

As for updating, when you go into your admin panel theres a thing at the bottom of the page which tells you when theres an update, just download the update and install it, but make sure you back the whole board up first.

Peter

Hope that helps, if you need any other help feel free to email me.

[dew1911]

Hmmm I would love to help but for the fact that it's PHPbb which I have little expieriance with, if it was an IPB board I'd be brilliant for help, I know them like the back of my hand (Sad I know)

[muddyjames]

I am glad I am doing the right thing to try and turn the posting to reg only but when ever I do it and I have tried a number of times now I keep getting the message

Could not update auth table

DEBUG MODE

SQL Error : 1054 Unknown column 'auth_cal' in 'field list'

UPDATE phpbb_forums SET auth_view = 0, auth_read = 0, auth_post = 1, auth_reply = 0, auth_edit = 1, auth_delete = 1, auth_cal = 0, auth_sticky = 3, auth_announce = 3, auth_vote = 1, auth_pollcreate = 1 WHERE forum_id = 2

Line : 156
File : admin_forumauth.php

[petergalileo]

James, give me a shout on YIM username is seagullparts.

[smog]

On my site which is extensive, we have a chat room it's a digichat thing and has loads of options to prevent the kind of problems you encounter.  

It costs money but to have but the control is greater and the service is brilliant they even compensate if it goes down for periods of time.

If you have the ability to ban their IP try banning some but not all of the numbers, whilst this may affect lots of users it is usefull for a short term solution in the mean time you could put further measures into place.

example banning 129.365.872.89 just take out the last two sets of numbers so it then on the ban list looks as such 129.365. incidently this works for all site's with abilities to ban just be careful not to ban a whole damn country (i done it) people get all kinds of upset with you if you do.

Not sure any of this has helped but if you need further info contact me.

[thermidorthelobster]

even if you remove the facility for guests to post you will still get it from spammers who register first !

Like mud-club I run my phpBB so an admin has to approve all new users.  In my experience, virtually all the hookey users have .ru email addresses, so it's very easy to filter them out at registration.  I don't have any legitimate Russian users, afaik!

I also modded my board so users have to input who referred them to the board before they can register, which makes it easier to sort the wheat from the chaff.

[petergalileo]

I am helping James out with this at the moment, It is down to lack of maintenance and updating.