Guestbooks

genie

Due to the amount of spam I was getting, I have had to remove the guestbook from my website. I'm looking to replace it with one which has spam filtering, if at all possible. Or if that's not possible, one which allows me to delete the spam. It's a genealogy website and now potential long lost relatives have no way of contacting me since I had to remove my e-mail address too a while back.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

ConsultClifford

what u running ? php?

if so i implemented a solution a while ago that catches the posters ip address- That way if someone posts spam you can use the ban ip function ... in the future that ip cannot access the guestbook.

maxheadroom

ConsultClifford wrote:

what u running ? php?

if so i implemented a solution a while ago that catches the posters ip address- That way if someone posts spam you can use the ban ip function ... in the future that ip cannot access the guestbook.

Yeah - I had to do something very similar for a guestbook on a site I run. Otherwise it'd be full of ads for foreign exchange scams and online poker tournaments...

I've noticed that most of those spams come from automated scripts running on a server somewhere, so its usually safe to ban the whole netblock.

genie

Thanks for your reply.

[HTML]what u running ? php?[/HTML]

No idea!

It's one of those create your own website templates for complete web idiots like me! The guestbook that came with it was crap, there was no way of deleting posts or banning anyone so want to try and get it right this time.

Fionn

i'm pretty new to web design. So far i have created three sites, so i'm not an authority on the subject. but anyway yes, I've noticed spamming of the guestbook too, i believe it's to get higher rankings in Search Engines, it's used by people who have signed up to affiliate programmes to promote specific sites and they use automated scripts and spam them as mentioned above.
One hosting company that i used for one of the sites had a ready made php guestbook which required mysql this is pretty much configureable in that it provides a control panel for IP banning and even swear word filtering among other features.
Another site that i done didn't have mysql enabled so i used a shareware flatfile CGI guestbook that seems to do almost as much as the mysql one.
Another thing you can try is use an image verification script. Like they use for instance for registering with Yahoo etc. it creats an image with random numbers and letters which must be typed in to verify and continue. (I haven't tried this prog yet)
you can get it here
http://www.rushtheweb.com/products.php?cmd=FormProtect

Also you can put a form submission script into your website for people to contact you rather than having your e-mail address on your site. The data miners use scripts called scrapers to harvest e-mail addresses which they sell on to spammers. Your host probably has a form mailer available in their scripts collection to do this.
Lots available here
http://www.hotscripts.com/CGI_and_Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Form_Processors/index.html

the one i used
http://phpformgen.sourceforge.net/

The shareware guestbook is called megabook
http://go-mega.net/megabook/download.html

this guestbook can be seen in action on the last site i did
http://www.sexanddeathgreenwhiteandgold.ie/

the other mysql guest book is here
http://ardfinnan.net/
hope this is of some help

Harry2001

genie wrote:

Due to the amount of spam I was getting, I have had to remove the guestbook from my website. I'm looking to replace it with one which has spam filtering, if at all possible. Or if that's not possible, one which allows me to delete the spam. It's a genealogy website and now potential long lost relatives have no way of contacting me since I had to remove my e-mail address too a while back.

Any suggestions? Thanks!

I know what you mean, this is one of the most annoying things about these days, ****ing spammers :mad:

I have used this one before http://www.webwizguide.info/asp/sample_scripts/guestbook_script.asp

You are sent an email every time someone signs the guestbook and you can then login to the admin section and either allow the post to go live or delete if a spammer.

Very easy to customise to the look of your site too

Buttmunchy

genie wrote:

Thanks for your reply.

[HTML]what u running ? php?[/HTML]

No idea!

It's one of those create your own website templates for complete web idiots like me! The guestbook that came with it was crap, there was no way of deleting posts or banning anyone so want to try and get it right this time.

www.bravenet.com has a guestbook thing - you don't need to download it or anything. On bravenet you get your guestbook and you can design it to how you want, and you can set it so a person can only send one message and not more than one in a row. But you have to set it like that. You can ban people and it saves their IP addresses AND you can delete any entries. It's so easy to use. I learnt about it in about five seconds. If you need any help just let me know and I'll see what I can do.

genie

Thanks for your reply. I've signed up for the free Bravenet Guestbook. Seems pretty easy to keep an eye on, with e-mail notifications when someone signs it, ability to delete posts etc.

Thanks again and Happy New Year!

Buttmunchy

Wow-I actually helped someone. Haha! :P