I'm getting tons of comment spam on my site. I'm assuming that these are scripts used to create the accounts and post comments (which is nice and easy, since the curl script necessary to do this is published here somewhere...).

Or do people actually have to do this manually? If the site sends a password, the users have to log in, then manually post comments, right?

So I want to stop this garbage - and please don't tell me to upgrade (I'm running 1.3.9) because I don't have the time to diff all my files and make the necessary changes, and especially because I'm not sure my theme will work with newer versions...

What I'd like to do is simply turn off user account registration - I'd replace it by a page with a link for people to email me to ask for accounts, which I'd then create manually. Is this possible? I can't see any other way of stopping this garbage for now. While SpamX is helping a lot with the actual comment spam, I've started getting 50-100 new accounts per day which I have to clean out manually.

Thanks for any help,

Kirk

http://www.mcelhearn.com

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Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

You need 3 things
Captcha
SLV Module
Lib-Trackback
here is a link to them all
here

Thanks, but that doesn't help - Captcha doesn't work with my version of GL (1.3.9).

All I really want to do is turn off user account creation (at least automatic creation).

Kirk

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Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

that is in config.php
This disables account creation

// stops new registrations if set to true.
$_CONF['disable_new_user_registration'] = false; // set to true to block users.

I reccomend Captcha because captcha will stop all registrations, also the others are worth thinking about.

Ok just seen this I think Captcha is your only option the scripts are able to by pass everything else. Why is upgrading so difficult ? it should take a few seconds ?

Should it take a few seconds? If I have to diff every file to find what I've changed, it seems it will be a lot more than that... If it was that simple, i'd certainly do it, but I don't think that's the case.

As for the bit in config.php, my version doesn't have that...

Kirk

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Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

Opps well you will certainly have to take the time to upgrade.
At least you have a Mac and OS X + BBEDIT !
By the way which theme do you use ?

Upgrade. Seriously.

1.3.9 is not supported any more, it has at least one serious security issue, and it doesn't even include Spam-X. Patching this all up would probably take you more time than upgrading.

bye, Dirk

Well, I've already added SpamX, and it works pretty well. My only problem with upgrading is the time it looks like it will take. Also, a friend tried out my theme and it has some issues... Sigh.

Kirk

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Read my blog: Kirkville -- http://www.mcelhearn.com Musings, Opinion and Miscellanea, on Macs, iPods and more

I too have started getting new account requests from spammers every day but I have the requirement that new accounts must be approved, so they (the spammers) don't get beyond requesting a new account.

My question is: in the same way that we can automatically approve users from a particular domain through the "config.php" file, can we automatically block users from specific domains too?

Grateful for your help,
Aleem