vBulletin Mods

np :)

Can someone address my question?

With Email Activation on, users are being pulled immediately into the newbie user group upon registration. The usergroup that allows posting, with restrictions. Why is it doing this? They should be left in the "Users Awaiting Email Activation" group until they activate by email. Because of this bug, spam bots are able to register and post without activating their email account. This nullifies the entire purpose of Email Activation. They should only be moved into the new users group after they activate.

Why? How to fix?
---------------------------------

I tried to post a question to the maker of GlowHost Spam O Matic on their support forums. He failed to answer any of my questions and then deleted all my posts. Very strange, and inappropriate behavior honestly. I guess their SpamOMatic support forum is not for support with SpamOMatic

Because it was designed that way.

Do you think spam bots cant click activation links if they can fill out a form?

You are right, this is the place to seek support.

Your choices are to either use the newbies group after registration or use the users awaiting validation group after registration.

works great ty

Want to thank you for great addon first.

Have question about moderated posts/threads (may be been asked here). In statistic there is:

Spam-O-Matic Statistics

X Spammers Denied Registration

X Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated



But where they located that "moderated posts"? I don't see them....

May be you can add in options that put all moderated threads/posts into some special "Trash-bin" forum and we can put forumID for it?

WBRs

P.S. sorry my english not well

either go to your settings in your own profile or look in the admincp/Moderation

this mod is wonderful and has helped me a lot to control the spam

Is it possible to control usergroup permissons? Who can ban or delete user?

Why would you *reduce* the built in security of vBulletin when you could have simply detected when someone Activates before moving them to the Newbies group? Simple solution. But instead you're telling me someone intentionally coded SpamOMatic to cripple the Email Activation feature of vBulletin? Why would you do that? SpamOMatic is supposed to increase security. Not break it.

No. Most of them DONT click activation links. Do you know why? Because theyd have to create thousands of email accounts just to do that.

We tried using just SpamOMatic alone. It didn't work. You place new users into a Newbies group ... but how does that stop them from posting? We ended up with hundreds of Spam BOT "Moderated Posts" that had to manually be deleted. One of my Moderators quit that day because he was overhwhelmed with the failure of your plug in to stop Spam.

So I took matters into my own hands and re-enabled Email Activation. Guess what? It all stopped. But a handful are now posting freely because your tool BREAKS the Email Activation function in vBulletin. Apparently the "You must activate" page deters a large percent of them because they can't activate by email like you assume. The smarter ones try posting anyways, and do so just fine because your tool doesn't stop them.

There is absolutely no reason why this has to be an either-or situation. All you have to do is fix the problem, and SpamOMatic can be used in conjunction with Email Activation. Detect Email Activation before putting them into Newbies group. Simple. Basic code change. Is there someone a little more willing to listen that I can report this bug to?

VBB

I guess if you don't like it, simply remove the program, problem solved.

You certainly won't get any help with an attitude like that.

Attitude? I am just trying to help by reporting a bug. You copped the attitude in your response, as if I was clueless about spam botS, or forums in general. Really caught me off guard actually.

I'm not trying to damage anyone's Ego here. Just trying to avoid endless hours of deleting unnecessary spam. Which is why your tool exists. This *bug* has been confirmed on the main vBulletin forums by a couple guys now. So it would be nice if you'd acknowledge it too.

Why would you give me such a strange, arrogant response, and tell me to get over it, or uninstall it? Wow. Why not take it as a bug or feature request and improve the tool? Is your ego that huge? This isnt personal. Its a bug. It needs to be fixed. And doing so will help everyone.

Ill just pay my programmer $14 to fix your bug instead. Lose the ego.

You are demanding special treatment. Have you ever heard of the word "please?"

Something like:

"Can you please make this mod do something that it doesn't do already?"

That would get you a lot more support than of an entire thread flaming this mod. If you understood how the mod worked, you wouldn't have this question in the first place.

Email activation puts people into the registered users group. That is the default setting of this mod when you install it.

If you do not like how vBulletin handles this, (since it is worthless, and yes, bots do click the links) you can optionally enable the Newbies system which will allow you to permission the group to your hearts content given all of the options that vBulletin allows for.

What is the point of having real people click a link to end up in the Newbies group?

Is it to make it more difficult for real people to post on your forums? Or in your mind, to prevent bots who don't click links from registering?

Actually, after reading your updated post, don't bother answering. I don't care. Go pay your $14 programmer to do whatever you want with it, he must be talented. All that anger and effort to try and save $14 bucks? Wow.

And didn't you get essentially the same answer in your vBulletin.com thread?

I have installed it and it works but when I try to edit the settings I get this error:
https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/external/2012/11/27.png

Check that you have set the correct permissions on the PHP files that you uploaded. Depending on your php environment they probably should be set to 644 or you can try 755 if 644 doesnt work. That or ask your hosting company to help read the messages in the Apache error logs...they will tell you exactly why Apache is forbidding you from accessing that page.

Server appears to currently be down and denying registrations even with:

StopForumSpam: Query Connection Errors
What should happen if the remote connection times out when querying the new registration?
set to Allow Registration

4 registrations in last 15 minutes denied for:
pam-O-Matic Tagged email - [email protected] Unable to connect to StopForumSpam.com. This is probably due to some temporary problems on their website: Unable to check. User passed to vBulletin registration system per your settings at 'StopForumSpam:

Unfortunately the last time the servers went down it also would not pass registrations through, even though it was set to fall back on "Allow Registration".

Edit: Looks like it may a temporary downtime, I see last week at the same time it also appears to have been down. Routine maintenance? Hope not.

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/external/2012/11/32.jpg

Not necessary. Pedigree confirmed recently that at the moment both www.stopforumspam.com and api.stopforumspam.org go to the same place. The issue has nothing to do with the URL.

Depending on where you are, you may also be timing out at times. Hurricane Sandy wreaked havoc on the east coast of the US and power is still out in many places. When I do a tracert for my own site it slows down noticeably doing hops through New York State and Atlanta,

I did have the updated "api" links already installed and was still getting no response from the server. This is coming from Texas.

What worries me is seeing nearly 4 hours of no submissions (presumably downtime) from 4:00AM to 8:00AM local time for StopForumSpam.com two weeks in a row (can't see detailed history past that from their published graphs).

Image below is directly from their site statistics:
http://www.stopforumspam.com/historygraph

https://www.vbulletin.org/forum/external/2012/11/25.jpg

Okay will do so, thanks for the help!! :)

As I said earlier (maybe in the thread for the vbStopForumSpam version by pedigree), sometimes their server can appear down for some users and not for others, depending on where you are when you're trying to access it.

As long as you set it to "allow registration" when the database can't be accessed, you'll be fine.

I don't really understand why but just in the last month I'm all of a sudden getting waves of spam registration attempts that are getting passed this add-on. Thankfully I have my forum set to where myself or another admin has to give a manual approval on the account so technically I have not been spammed. But when I first installed this mod up until just a while ago none of the slimeball spammers were even getting passed the Spam-o-matic...now they are...I think someone found a hack or a security hole to exploit.

try this

Are Spammers suck! and Spam-O-Matic compatible? Do they interfere with each other in any way?

they work well with each other

Yes. They do not compete with one another but target different varieties of spammers. Glowhost is primarily about blocking human spammers. Spammers Suck is about blocking spambots.

Does this work with vb5-connect?

this is for vb4 only

BEAST! THANK YOU!

I'm confused...is Easy Clean up something we are able to run manually? If so, how? Our site has been hit pretty hard by spammer registration (almost 100 a day, which is the reason I set up this mod) and I'd like to have them removed if they match anything in the StopForumSpam DB.

Any help would be immensely appreciated!

This mod as great as it is will not help you with the clean up of already registered members to the site.

This is what I do for registration:

I have this mod set to check new registration e-mail, and IP address. I also have it set to auto moderate the first post only, in case someone gets past the mod. The only problem with this is that you have to pay attention to the post to see if it's been moderated, and then allow access manually.

The second thing that I do is use another mod I use is NoSpam!Image Enhancement by BOP5 I'm not really suppose to talk about other mods on this thread, but with the two combined I have few to no spammers.

Manual clean up is required for you at this point. However, with the use of this mod it may take a little time but you can not only clean but you may also submit the spammers when doing so.

Hi All-

We will have a fix for the MySQL ENGINE/TYPE bug that is repeatedly reported very soon.

Also, a couple other common problems, plus a new feature (well, maybe a couple small ones too) is being added which has been requested many times over. Not telling what they are but this will be ready soon for your holiday present from GlowHost. :)

We are not doing anything major here, mainly code cleanup and bug fixes, because of the need for a vB5 version.

Stay tuned!

PS a big thanks to djbaxter, TheSupportForum, ForceHSS and I am sure I missed a few for your great help and support of this mod.

Can someone PLEASE tell me how to fix the problem of posts that cannot be approved. The only solution is to physically deleted them and that's not a solution.

Is that referring to the database error when installing the product?
In the past couple of days I've had more spammers than the rest of my forum's history combined, so this is the first place I came to but I can't seem to install it :(

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

Answer is just a page away...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...postcount=2199

This is the bomb (I'm so old). Installed, and nominated for MOTM.

Hello,
Im getting the following error:

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

PLEASE HELP!

Read the posts...

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showp...postcount=2199

I'm about to install this mod and I see there is a DB error when installing and a fix for it.

What I'd like to know is: Should I do this fix before installing it for the first time or just install it and see if I need the fix?

MUST be changed before it will install correctly,

OK, thanks for that.

I installed in this fantastic Add-on yesterday and it caused all new post to error and didn't allow anyone to post. Is there a setting I'm missin please?

Thank you in advance

http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=289463
see if this one works better for u

Does this mean I can't use spam-o-matic?

Philip

spam o matic needs updated and some things fixed I have no idea why it is not working for you. Wrong install or bad install hard to tell as there is no error message you have given, screenshots or links to your site

I will post a screen capture later today.

Thank you

Hi

I have added a screen shop of the error message my users get when they try to post

Error message

Philip

Can you make a test account for me need to see the error when I post. Also check server logs and post what errors it shows

Hey, I just installed this and it seems to work great.. Many thanks.

Is there a way to restrict the user email and IP info, or preferably the entire spamomatic dialogue, to admins only?

And keep mods or super mods from seeing it or using it?

Do you mean the Spam-O-Matic Statistics? For now no unless it is recoded, I know the coder is making some changes and will come out with a new version soon so it might be added but you can hide the stats from all in the settings on it

Hi

Thanks .. You can use pip with password spamo

I don't have spam-o-matic showing in my statistics and logs either

Thank you

the problem is your skin css part seems to be an error in it

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

Thank you for looking - WOuld you have any idea how this can be fixed or even what may be causing the css problem? We haven't made any changes to the style sheet.

Philip

You need to add the default skin to do this go to admincp/Styles & Templates/Style Manager/[Add New Style]
Parent Style = No Parent Style
Title = Default Style
Allow User Selection = Yes
Display Order = 1
then test if you still have a problem then remove this plugin and try this one

I can't take it anymore. There are always posts that cannot be approved!!!! It means I have to log in as the user, delete the thread, recreate the thread and then approve it. Is there any way to fix this bug?

And how are you approving them from admincp or another way. Are you a normal admin or a super admin. Have you ever thought it might be best to turn the approve option to no

I'm a super admin yes. I approve them through the drop down notification at the top of the forum next to the login (where the PM notification of new messages is). I have turned it off yes but that is the main feature that prevents spam posts. I don't find the hack stops registration very well. I would like to use it but there seems to be a bug where many posts just cannot be approved.

Hi there

I added the sytle sheet as you suggested and it doesn't work so I've removed the add-on.. I am disapointed but will try the other option you suggest. Do you think VB will add spam-o-matic as a basic feature in VB5?

Thank you for your help, it's much appreciated.

Philip

approve them from the admin panel. I have this mod and this mod I have the approve posting turned off and never had any problems so check over all settings as there is more than one place for that setting

sorry it did not work for you and no it will not be added to vb5

Thanks very much! I'll install that other mod and see what happens.

Though I'm wondering how much does this hack really do? Don't spammers change email, username and IP with every attempt? How can one possible create a db of spammers?

Hello again

I've just noticed this which has been in my acp forever - Could this be my problem?

Image link

yes thats the problem do a revert on them. You really should of got a updated skin for your vb version as your skin is very old also the default skin is wrong you put it as a moblie skin it needs to be no Parent Style that comes under standard style best to delete that one you did and redo it

Would you mind explaining in more detail please, where do I get a skin from?

I've deleted the default style and changed it as you said.

I am sorry, but this isn't usually my thing.

I've also deleted the spam-o-matic, should I put it back on once I've done the revert? I'm worried what might happen when I click revert to be honest.

Thank you once again.

you would get an updated skin from whoever you got it from in the first place if you cant get one then use one from here we have alot of good skins for free also before you make any changes to your skin or files make a backup of everything once you have done a revert of them two problems then reinstall this plugin

I've done everything now and put spam-o-matic back on and all seems to work.. would you mind taking a look please? I'm looking out to buy a new skin also, can you suggest a site?

Thank you for all your help today, you've been a great help to me.

Philip

have you taken a look at the free skins on here

i get this error when trying to import product.. Any ideas?
Database error in vBulletin 4.2.0:

Invalid SQL:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `glowhostspamomatic_log`(
`date` DATETIME NOT NULL,
`ip` VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
`email` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`username` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`message` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`is_blocked` TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT "0",
`user_hash` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
`user_id` INT NOT NULL
) TYPE=MyISAM;;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'TYPE=MyISAM' at line 10
Error Number : 1064
Request Date : Tuesday, November 20th 2012 @ 04:51:45 PM
Error Date : Tuesday, November 20th 2012 @ 04:51:46 PM
Script : http://www.etxauctions.com/forum/adm...=productimport
Referrer : http://www.etxauctions.com/forum/adm...?do=productadd
IP Address : 75.108.94.116
Username : pmay68
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version : 5.5.28-log

in product-glowhostspamomatic.xml change all instances of

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

to

Block Disabled:      (Update License Status)
Suspended or Unlicensed Members Cannot View Code.

then install again

Im having a little issue installing. Can someone please let me know where the files go?.

Thank you

if you open the zip file go to the upload folder you will see 3 folders
admincp
includes
and and xml folder inside the includes folder now inside each folder you have files just upload these files into the same named folders in your ftp

Thank you I did so now how do I accses it on the forum or edit it?

I installed Glowhost Spam-O-Matic today and now when I try to make a post I get this:

Warning: require_once(includes/functions_ghsom.php) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/includes/functions_newpost.php(532) : eval()'d code on line 5

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'includes/functions_ghsom.php' (include_path='.:/usr/local/php5/lib/php') in /home/content/m/e/d/mediasvi/html/learnhowtoreason/forum/includes/functions_newpost.php(532) : eval()'d code on line 5


What do I need to do to fix this?

Thank you for your time.

you have not installed the files follow my above post

1. Log in to your Admin CP and scroll down to Plugins & Products >> Manage Products

2. Under Import Product, Browse to where you unpacked the zip file and then click on product-glowhostspamomatic.xml

3. Then click on Import

Done: installed.

This fixed my install as well. Thank you!

Also got an error, but this fixed it.
To be sure, there are 3 instance that have to be changed:

Line 30; 38 and 47
Although I recommend to use Notepad++ and just hit replace all occurences

Hi,
Where can I find the logs? I would like to know which users have been banned or denied for registration

admincp/Statistics & Logs
If you cant see them make yourself a superadmin

i use in my forum here in Brazil, working perfectly, now I'm just setting so that users do not block the truth.
I took the liberty of translating the warning to all User comes to what happens.

We installed this mod a few weeks ago, and it's effectively catching a lot and preventing some spammer registrations, but it's allowing some to get through as well. We have our key from SFS installed, and reports are sent to them, but some spammers with lengthy records on SFS are still able to register.

Here's an example of an IP - 222.77.229.204. It has a laundry list of reports on SFS dating back to last June, and he was permitted to register 4 days ago. Why wouldn't SOM prevent him from registering? We've had other similar oversights as well.

Great mod, BTW! But it seems like it's not entirely effective. Thank you!

install this as well http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=289463 it goes well with it set it to 20 secs in the settings when you have it installed

Web Hosting footer link shows up twice

I've installed this, and it's really working well.

I do have one problem though. There's a "web hosting" link that shows up in the footer now. It goes to Glowhost, so I guess that's the "fee" for using this mod. OK, that's fine, but it's showing up twice! How do I fix that?

Here's the page: http://www.gardenforums.com/forum/forum.php

Affiliate System: Link text = leave blank
Credits: Give Thanks = no

Wow, that was quick! Accurate too, of course.

Thank you.

Your tool has another bug. Though based on your reaction to previous bug reports Im not sure why Im posting this.

If users are restricted from posting links in their messages (until they reach a certain post count) so as to block spammers .... your tool also blocks their post if they put images in them.

This is a bug.

Your tool should differentiate between a text link and any other random BBCODE that is used to do other functions like display a photo.

Users who post pictures in their first messages are being blocked and everyone is getting upset about it, for good reason. We only want to block what we told Spam O Matic to block: URLS ... .

Please fix this bug.

Database error when importing xml. Any ideas?

Database error in vBulletin 4.0.8:

Invalid SQL:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `******glowhostspamomatic_log`(
`date` DATETIME NOT NULL,
`ip` VARCHAR(15) NOT NULL,
`email` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`username` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`message` VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
`is_blocked` TINYINT NOT NULL DEFAULT "0",
`user_hash` VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
`user_id` INT NOT NULL
) TYPE=MyISAM;;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'TYPE=MyISAM' at line 10
Error Number : 1064

read a page back for the fix

as allowing the user record that fell on that list?

We recently upgraded to 4.2.0, and the Easy Cleanup tool no longer appears for moderators in the Moderation Tools dropdown. I've tried re-installing the plugin, but that does not fix it. Does anyone know how to restore this option?

Do you mean the Spam-O-Matic option

Yes

Have all the info filled in on the GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic options, admincp/Usergroups/Administrator Permissions edit permissions set all to yes, Set yourself to superadmin from the config, Check to make sure you have all this done

So, I have the same error, same line in class_core.php

It's really SOM error, do you have any solution to fix this?

All of this is already correctly set, with the exception of some of the options. The only options that are not set are Akismet Key, Newbies Manager is turned off, and Auto-Moderation is disabled. To re-emphasize the point, I've been running the Spam-o-Matic for about a year and a half without any issues. This only popped up after the upgrade to 4.2.

check on default skin also check to see if any templates need a revert. Have you tried removing all files from the ftp and the xml and doing a full reinstall

Hi, I was wondering if there was a way to manually register a user that is being blocked from signing up.

I am still getting the same error "Registration denied, this forum runs an active policy of not allowing spammers. Please contact us via the "Contact Us" page link if you believe this is in error"

I checked the stopspamforum site and input his email and IP but it came back clean.

What other options do i have? I don't want to turn off the spam filter just for him this one time if possible.

Thank you.

JR

Sounds like you have names ticked for mod to check at SFS. If you do, un-check names and then mod will only send IP and email addy's to be checked.

Hmm... not sure what is going on but I have users telling me they are getting false positives, and I sitll have some spam slipping through the cracks.

I'm sure I'm only getting emailed once for ever 10 people that have the issue trying to register ...