BuddyPress.org

I shouldn’t joke about spam as it is quite a problem with buddypress. I’ve tried so many things and I am out of ideas. In this Forum there are lots of suggestions but everyone still seems to be SOL or just hanging on.

Where I have failed:

BP Registration Options

This would be great if it worked. But, it still allows users to register. Worse, is that they show up under Site Wide Activity on the home page for everyone to see that you are getting spam. It would be great if there was a fix for that. For anyone with lots of spam, start here, at least you can have some options: http://webdevstudios.com/support/wordpress-plugins/buddypress-registration-options/

Not to get sidetracked here but this is a cool plugin I found for the Sitewide Activity Widget:http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/advanced-recent-site-wide-posts-widget

With BP options I get several errors, which I will share since the Forum by the Plugin’s Author seems to not get much response. http://webdevstudios.com/support/forum/buddypress-registration-options/not-working-and-have-errors/ – Maybe we can work some things out here bc I am not the only one with problems with this plugin.

SI Captcha

http://wpmu.org/si-captcha-anti-spam-wpmu-and-buddypress-plugin-contest-entry/

Well it works, or at least shows on the registration page. BUT, the crafty bots or slave laborists just fill in the codes and it’s a waste as well as an extra step for a user that is worthless.

ReCaptcha

Here is another great one.

http://buddypress.org/forums/topic/buddypress-spam-1

But it only shows on the comments and NOT on the registration page itself. It’s been “modified” to work with BP, but I can’t get it to work. Again, slave labor can overcome this one quite easily. Think I am kidding about the slave labor: http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20080311/human-captcha-breaking/

Here is an entire group for spam lovers like myself:

http://buddypress.org/groups/fighting-spam-splogs

There are some good tips in that link above here are a few swings I took:

http://wordpress-plugins.feifei.us/hashcash/

No dice for me. It seems to work for comments but not the registration page.

http://www.poradnik-webmastera.com/projekty/invisible_defender/

Same again… No dice for me. It seems to work for comments but not the registration page.

http://www.svenkubiak.de/nospamnx-en/

Giving it a whirl now… I’ll keep you posted.

http://www.hybrid6.com/webgeek/plugins/wp-spamfree

Same again… No dice for me. It seems to work for comments but not the registration page.

Here is my favorite and WAS my most hopeful option:

http://www.bp-tricks.com/tips_and_tricks/stopping-the-sploggers/

Guess what, still getting spam. Loads of it too. You would think a little core hacking would throw them off. Tsk tsk…. not these bots/humans. A little tip here for the changing of the slug and the code you add to the config files – Don’t forget to put the define statements BEFORE the STOP EDITING HERE LINE in the config.php. That had me and others scratching our heads for a while.

How about this one:

http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/signup-code

Yeah why don’t we just go ahead and give the user a puzzle via snail mail and they can can send smoke signals once they get it. Or better yet just send them a link to Facebook and save everyone some headache. This MAY work but it is too much to ask of a user.

Maybe a few checkboxes will throw the bots off:

http://premium.wpmudev.org/project/terms-of-service

Guess what? No dice.. still getting spam.

.htaccess solutions:

http://wpmututorials.com/how-to/spam-blogs-and-buddypress/

This one seemed hopeful. But no change, still getting spam.

# BEGIN ANTISPAMBLOG REGISTRATION

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .yourbpsignupslug*

RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourhomedomain.* [OR]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$

RewriteRule (.*) http://die-spammers.com/ [R=301,L]

# END ANTISPAMBLOG REGISTRATION

You can try banning IPs but an .htaccess tidbit or by using most of the plugins above. But IPs are a dime a dozen to spammers and thats a total waste of time if you ask me.

In Summary:

Short of rewriting the registration page and my own plugin for spam I am at a loss. Any tips would be helpful. Hopefully this post will help some others with the same problem. Sorry for the sarcasm but it’s how I survive the insanity.

Site: http://hoopsjones.com

BP Version 1.1.3

WP – 2.8.6