The fight at first was cruel. It started all when Aeron sent me a private message on the forum saying that guests were creating topics in the 'General Discussion' forum advertising and spamming. Not knowing what to do because I wasn't too familiar with a phpBB admin CPU (I normally used IPB boards back in the day), I just set a restriction that only members with one post could create a topic. Well, guests aren't members, therefore these guest spam bots still got around that restriction. I sent our forum service a few questions regarding on how I can restrict guests from posting and creating topics at the forum. Finally I got a response and upon reading it, I realized how stupid I was. There was a 'Forum Permissions' section of the Admin CPU that I had overlooked. Once I changed the settings on that, I felt that I had officially won the war on spam, and that I could then focus on advertising #Foote_Chat and getting word out about it. In celebration, I sent out a mass e-mail saying that we won this little battle that we had been fighting, and that #Foote_Chat was now safe to enjoy once again. Thankfully that e-mail wasn't received by a lot, because within a day or two, round two of the spam war began.
Caitlin and I were talking one night when she said that she would've jumped three stories high or something exaggerated if somebody that we didn't know joined the forum. I then went to the forum page that I had up and refreshed it, and strangely enough as soon as Caitlin said that, I noticed that we had a new member. I was pretty excited about this newcomer hoping that something good would come out of having this needed member around. The member commented in the 'Forum News' forum under the Member of the Month topic and I went to see what they had said. When I scrolled down and saw ads for Viagra and the such, I knew that the spam bots were not giving up just yet. I quickly deleted the message and the member, but many more came afterwards.
When it came to the point where we had more members and most of these members were spam bots, I thought of the second alternative that the forum service sent me in that message after I asked on how to stop guests from posting. This method was to turn the forums to invitation-only. I put up a notice in the 'Forum News' forum (which that topic was the new home of the spam bots) that the forum was going to go invite-only on January 20th, giving any guests who weren't bots and wanting to join the opportunity to do so before we went totally private. For that week that we had the warning that we were going invite-only, many more spam bots joined and the forum was very inactive. I feared that invitation-only would just get rid of the bots, but would increase inactivity of the forum and bring the forum to its doom. I was thinking of other methods to try and get these bots rid of, but nothing mentally worked out.
On January 17, two new updates came about from the forum service. They were two MODs. The MODs included the Cash MOD and the Referral MOD. The Cash MOD would give the ability of giving members a reward for posting by giving away a fake currency. This currency could then be donated or exchanged for another currency. In the future, the forum service will be giving us additions to the MOD such as shops and banks, so this MOD isn't worthless and if I were you, I'd save up on your 'cuarters'. This MOD could also be handy for roleplaying or having avatar/signature shops. The Referral MOD is also a great addition. For referring others to join up on the forum through the Referral Center, you'll be rewarded publicity in the Top Referrers section, some cuarters, and a better chance of being given or nominated the title of Member of the Month. It's a great system for making #Foote_Chat active with new and fresh members! We also added the additions of a guestbook and shoutbox to the forum.
Now that you're filled with some information of the newest additions we have at #Foote_Chat, we can continue on with the story.
I had a fear that the Referral MOD and the invitation-only system would clash. I read on the Admin CPU that you could only invite through the CPU, thus any others forms of inviting seemed obsolete. The date of the invite-only system launch came fast, and already it was Friday, the 19th. Caitlin referred two new members to the forum that day (Onelastwish and camerawhore™) and I spent the last day of open registration on Runescape, finally getting 100 combat around eleven at night. Once I had 100 combat and had some new hunter levels, I logged out to think further on the situation that the forum was about to go through. It was around twelve to one this morning, and I could've easily went into the Admin CPU and click that bullet to turn the forum invite-only, but instead I thought that I would wait until the morning and see if any new spam bots would pop up. (By the way, I got rid of all 12 registered spam bots last night and their messages were deleted.)
This morning I came on ready to hit that invite-only bullet at my own will. Instead, I felt like searching the Admin CPU. Last night I had a thought in my head of a way to make it so that people could register, I could approve them, and then they could post once their account was activated. I looked yesterday and didn't see it, so at that I thought that there was no hope now and that we would be going invite-only. I looked around this morning and found the golden ticket. I found a way that when somebody registers that they must go into their e-mail account that they registered with and activate their account. I knew that this would either cut back on the number of spam bots or totally get rid of them. And I hope that this new system makes that go bye-bye forever.
There's the quick history of the "#Foote_Chat Spam War" and the newer additions that I wished to speak of in more detail. If you want to see what this forum is about or maybe even join, click here. I have to end this entry short because I'm starving to death as I didn't eat yet today, so here's a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas related PotD:
Picture of the Day
Have a good one, and happy posting!
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