BuddyPress.org

“would it not be possible to have certain customizable elements which each and every installation of WPMU/BP had to create whilst doing an install, e.g. the name of the pages and hooks that the sploggers exploit?”

They look for the default registration slug. You already have the ability to change it.

Again to the two guys being relentlessly spammed: post the domain names that you are having problems with and I will try to find out what’s going on.

^F^

zageek and Bbrian017 – what are the URLs of the websites that are getting spammed? I will take a look at them for you.

^F^

What recommendations are there for a captcha or a custom field creation that fits into the BP 1.2 registration process?

I have tried a few plugins but they don’t work in BP 1.2 and dont appear in the registration.

Yes, logging on and custom profiles etc are OK … but this open door approach DOES pass on a lot of janitorial work to site admins

It seems strange that there is no default to offer some basic kind of obstacle to registration in the blog registration process … it is like building a house with wide open doors.

Buddypress only adds layers on top of WPMU liabilities what with the attraction of Activity Directory and so on. It looks embarrassing to have it all advertised their by default.

Just a question, perhaps this should be on dev, but would it not be possible to have certain customizable elements which each and every installation of WPMU/BP had to create whilst doing an install, e.g. the name of the pages and hooks that the sploggers exploit?

Yes, they know which pages and what code to look for … but if this was having to be changed during each and every installation, would it not work to stop them?

Excuse my ignorance, we suffer sploggers but I have no idea what it is they are exploiting.

@Bbrian017 I feel for you, ma. I am scratching my head. On my prod site, in over 18 months (since pre-BP alpah no less) I have had maybe 9 or 10 spam accounts. While I have a bit more of an involved signup process (just a bunch of addl required fields) I don’t have anything else. Blog creation IS disabled, so maybe that help? Not sure.

Ieven had sCaptcha going for awhile btu took it down as folks had so much trouble reading the stupid characters.

Still thinking of what’s up in your case. Hang in there.

Did you try deleting wp-signup.php?

And have you made sure that all spam users have been ‘spammed’ so they cannot just simply add/open new spam users/blogs?

Seriously no one is having spam issues like I am?

13 accounts since my last post!

please any help here would be great

My spam issue is just not stopping and it’s driving me insane!!!!

Thanks for the tip mlovelock I have done what you said. Seems it has stopped some spam but 10 minute later it all starts again.

They must get error messages stating the register page doesn’t exist or something.

@Bbrian017 – the register ‘slug’ is the path to your register page. So the default is yourdomain.com/register – yours would now be yourdomain.com/randomcrazyslugger

Given that, you probably don’t want your register page to be ‘randomcrazyslugger’ so you might want to change it to something that makes a little more sense to your site / your users.

Alright I have added right after

define( ‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’ );

and right before

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

What is this suppose to do anyways? I’m not sure I understand how this stops spam.

So now my wp-config is like this,

define( ‘COOKIEPATH’, ‘/’ );

define( ‘BP_REGISTER_SLUG’, ‘randomcrazyslugger’ );

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

/** WordPress absolute path to the WordPress directory. */

Don’t add it below the “Stop Editing” line.

I added the line. as suggested.

/* That’s all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

define( ‘BP_REGISTER_SLUG’, ‘yourregisterslug’ );

/** WordPress absolute path to the WordPress directory. */

That’s what it looks like.

Andrea_r sorry I’m in three different threads right now I feel like your chasing me around haha!

So now what?

I sit here with a website that doesn’t allow registrations?

Something official from buddy press or WPMU needs to be written…

what do I do?

Yes, just add that to the config file. Don’t move any files or folders around.

There’s really no need to make unfounded accusations like that.

Go turn off the ability for users to add other users. If you already have spammers in your system, they’ll let others in. It’s under Site Admin -> Options.

Doing the easy stuff is just the first level of defense.

Guys when you re write the slug do you have to also move folders or files?

or do I simply add

define( “BP_REGISTER_SLUG”, “random slug” );

to the wp-config?

I simply did the easy things. I added yes or no questions. I put in default profile fields they would have to answer and I added a date of birth field.

What I don’t understand is right now I have registrations closed and they are still signing up.

Registration has been closed for almost an hour and I still got 8 or 9 spam accounts over the last 40 minutes.

How is that possible?

Bbrian – what exactly have you implemented to stop splogs? I’m not being sarcastic. If I know what you’re tried already, I can suggest different things other than telling you things you tried already.

“I wonder where the spammers get the time to figure out ways to spam sites is there like a spam university or something”

They buy automated scripts. Seriously, I can send links. They google for default text like “powered by buddypress” and “/register/”, plus they jointly build lists of BP-powered sites and share them, so they can then drop these lists of sites into their programs.

Part of stopping them relies on figuring out how they come in, which we’ve spent time doing.