Miva message board

[John F]

New poster here... I'm looking for someone to help me, perhaps, with my two MIVA message boards. Both my message boards are being plagued with spammers who pop in, post their crap and leave. I can ban the IP, but they never come with the same IP.

What I would LIKE to do is to have the board password protected so that any poster would be required to get a password before he posts. Much like you do on this forum.

Yes, I know I could change formats, but the format of the MIVA board is simple and easy to use - I would like to keep it.

Is there anybody out there knowledgeable enough (and willing) to take on a project like this? I would be willing to pay MONEY if you can! :) (Although I'm not rich!)

Here are the URLs of both message boards:

http://www.unexco.com/msgboard/msgboard.mv

http://www.unexco.com/squirrel/squirrel.mv

Many thanks!

---John

[John F]

One thing I forgot... I know I could PWD-protect the directory, but I want people to be able to READ posts, just not be able to post until I give them a password. Nothing fancy, it doesn't have to be "automatic," I would ask them to email me for a password, then I would manually assign one and email it back to them.

[aGorilla]

How about a poor man's password?

Just lop off X chars (6?) from s.callerid, display it on the form, and ask them to type it into a box. Then, on every post, if g.Confirm NE substring(s.callerid, 1, 6), spit out an error explaining why, otherwise, post it.

[John F]

Well, that would be just peachy if I knew how to do that.... I looked in the script for callerid, but it isn't there. I know it's used for ID in MIVA, but unfortunately, I don't know how to do that.

Can you?

--J

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

You dont have to look for it. s.callerid is a system variable that is automatically generated when a browser sessions starts.

Unless you were already tracking unique users, you likely wouldnt be using the s.callerid variable - so you wont find it in your script. However, you can utilize it such as aGorilla mentioned.

[John F]

Just want to tell you I haven't had one damn spammer visit since you did that thing on my message board! NOT ONE! I can?t say there?s anything more satisfying than foiling a spammer, except for maybe choking one...

And nobody has complained about the extra field, I can?t say I notice any decrease in traffic, but it always varies anyway.

Just want to tell you THANKS AGAIN! And if I can dig up some PAYING work for you I?ll give you a holler!

---John

[aGorilla]

Just want to tell you I haven't had one damn spammer visit since you did that thing on my message board! NOT ONE! I can?t say there?s anything more satisfying than foiling a spammer, except for maybe choking one...

And nobody has complained about the extra field, I can?t say I notice any decrease in traffic, but it always varies anyway.

Just want to tell you THANKS AGAIN! And if I can dig up some PAYING work for you I?ll give you a holler!
---John

Happy to help, and pleasantly surprised by how well it worked :)

[John F]

Me too. (How well it worked, I mean.) But then I just figured it was PEOPLE doing that, didn't even THINK of bots. Gotta be a special place in hell for those guys.