Forum's owner out of teeth

[vittorio]

Hi all,

I am a php freelancer, I hold in local high schools (Italy) e-teaching lab-collective sessions.
I use for this my websites which are linked from my new phpBB-Forum :
PHP Programming & Webhosting Index

I set up this forum in last February to back up my platform and also to try to arise my package-sales which are :
A website Demo in PHP

I set online since quite a few years a number of JavaScript and PHP scripts to get some indexing for SEO and I must say I am quite satisfied with that.

I am now wondering on what's wrong in my phpBB-Forum I can only count on 31 MEMBERS of which 5 members are related to myself, so let's say I only have 26 users.

This forum is strongly equipped to fight SPAM and undesired themes, forces to post in 3 hours after registration and after that, if new member has not posted ...he is semi-automatically deleted.

I runned a test report on the 21st of August 2007 and in 45 minutes the forum has deleted 11 undesired members :
PHP Programming & Webhosting View topic - Blob's out of teeth

Does anyone have some suggestion to help me out to improve subscriptions ?

[ctabuk]

Hi, you have taken this forum of yours into another thread here at WPW and the topic was PHP so that is fine - But supposing I posted on your forum and said I mod at WPW and placed a link?

All forum owners should ask admin first if it's ok - most likely Mike would say 'fine -do it' but it is considered good manners to ask first.

Get rid of that leaping frog - the site is cluttered - nothing grabbed me and said 'join'

You have not promoted it in Directories. You have been promoting mostly through forums.
You need to do some serious SEM on Directories for forums.

[vittorio]

Hi mod (ctabuk )

No way I was trying to arbtrarily post or worst spamming myself in WPW forum, sofar I stand very hard to the people that try to spam my forum

I only made the shorter thing I posted ... My apologies for that.

Regarding to what I think if others would do the same on my forum, well if that does not publish code that I sell and have written for that intent, I wouldn't object on any conflict and just allow it, as I am doing already from many sub-forums of mine.

On the other hand I am convinced that, if anyone links from my forum to his pages, that would honour me in the first place, as I would feel to be a good vehicle for promotion.

About the frog I recently replaced a jumping OMER (Simpsons) as a few people told me that was inadeguate and unserious.
The image shows just a JavaScript hint to implement a background.

Regarding the promotion I stated that I am quite happy with my searchability in SEO in return from my publishings of which this is an example

That is proved from the large spamming of which I am targeted ...if you please read my 45 minutes forum-activity report

I am claiming herein in this thread that spite of the fact my freebies for SEO are RAW CODE , people coming to my site are client side minded and get lost in my code, so they run away in search of code-editors.
So the question is on what to do for pulling them on the server side scripting !

If you feel that some of my content in this thread is spamming or inadeguate please notify me.

[crankydave]

Starting a new forum and gaining membership takes time, effort and a lot of content that folks will find useful and helpful.

Right off the bat I see a couple of big problems in trying to build a community.

First off, the number of areas that you must join to see. It appears to me to be most of them. People don't want to have to join to be able to read or find out if the forum really is of interest to them.

Couple that with the fact that you're deleting members that do sign up if they don't post something in 3 hours. You're basically telling people they're not welcome. You are determining that someone who joins and does not post within 3 hours is a spammer.

As an example, I lurked on this forum a long time before signing up and then didn't post on it until long after that. Your forum won't let me lurk and would have labeled me a spammer.

Recipe for disaster if you're trying to build a community IMO.

Dave

[vittorio]

Reply to Dave (Semi-automatic deleting)
Dave,
Thanks a lot for your post I appreciate your close-up very much.
I feel you have centered the target but probably you are missing the fact that you are talking to a just one man poster, moderator, admin, owner.

Clearly I do not want to convince you that my choices are right, sofar I am here asking help and hints, I do not know if you saw the reporting of 45 minutes activity which I linked and commented.
I can add to that the consideration that at this moment I would have had much more than 2341 that would be an huge deal to control and filter and follow up on repeated spam attempts ... I could not really manage.

The forum has 4 sections totally free to surf of which the Top one (php) is fully surfable and that gives the possibility to the "lurker" to evaluate if registering or not and how far would that be convenient to subscribe.

As a result of the impact of your Reply I did add the hint to just a new entry-hello with a quick reply to any forum post :
New Entries please just POST a quick reply to ANY FORUM
i.e. : Post your Hello to hobbies' forum
Thanks
Vittorio

[crankydave]

As a moderator, administrator and owner on a few forums, I certainly understand first hand, the problem of controlling spam. I can't tell you the number of days I spend deleting spam, banning members, banning IP's and email extensions.

It is a never ending task. Just don't lose sight of what you're trying to accomplish - building a community.

Don't let the spammers dictate how you run your forum.

A couple of other thoughts...

I'm not sure if the content behind the members only areas are indexable. If it is not, you're missing an opportunity to get found.

Be sure and "define" your forum and site. When I click on the homepage, I expected to find stuff about programming. It appears to me to be some sort of dating or social searching site.

Quite frankly, I'm confused as the kind of community you're trying to build.

Dave

[wige]

Just out of curiosity, how would this 3 hour post requirement cut down on spam? Or is that not the intent of this rule?

If I was going to create a system to create accounts on forums for the purposes of spamming them, I would set it up so that it creates it's first post within 10-15 minutes to avoid manual deletion before the automated activity is spotted.

If the purpose is to ensure that the members of the forum remain active, I would set the initial posting requirement at about a week. Really, forum posts primarily benefit the forum owner, by providing free and fresh content for the SEs, link juice from other sites, and a reason for visitors to return. If I signed up for a forum and got a message along the lines of "give me free content within 3 hours or get out", I'd be gone.

[vittorio]

To : Wige

Frankly I got lost on our question, however these are the details :
Majority of spammers register to any default-set of phpBB-forum as follows :
Using fake E-mail ...so no mail is cross checked by an Activation E-mail
Spam into their forum Profile links to : Pharmaceutical , Erotics , Financials ...etc
Normally they would also appear in the Memberlist of the forum
1) - I added code to the forum that checks if a new Member has validated his subscription to the forum.
. . . by having received and clicked on the activation E-mail.
2) - I also added some code that checks if a Member has posted any simple REPLY or New Topic...
. . . as presentation of his interests, [...as spammers can't wait to spam]

If those check do not give positive results the registration is aborted.
Any time that the page memberlist.php is processed that code is implemented and a few users deleted

If a new Member registers and activates his account and posts he will process the code added positively and will not be deleted.
I will verify his post and his website link and if I find he is neverthless spamming, I will then manually delete him and ... I will have valid addresses to bann
What is really amazing after all this is the fact that a spammer keep registering with fake E-mails just to appear with his link at the bottom of the main page as the last registered user ...till the next one registration replaces his link.
To see how the system works please check the number of users on the bottom of the forum main page, then click on memberlist.php [Members] and surf back to the bottom of the mainpage to see that the number of the registered users has been purged.

Our users have posted a total of 122 articles
We have 44 [check the number of users after clicking on memberlist.php] registered users

...All this is explained in plain by links from the main page of the forum please see links INFO WARNING REPORT

[crankydave]

1. Remove the email and website fields from your member list. Email harversters love those things and you remove the "incentive" of spamming to make that list.

2. You will find that most spammers don't care about adding a website to their profile. They just want to get links in their post.

3. If you require email activation they shouldn't be able to add a website to their profile until after they activate their account. Fake emails are no problems. Links to their profile are no problem if they don't activate their account.

You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

You're asking for opinions as to how to improve subscriptions. It is being pointed out to you why some of the things you're doing could likely be preventing that from happening and all you seem to be doing is trying to justify the things being pointed out as potential problems.

As I said in my last post, I really have no idea what kind of a community you're trying to build. This is a very important factor to anyone who wants to join a community.

So which is it? A programming site or a eDating site?

Additionally, I don't think you need to post any more links to your forum or pages there. Each of us can find it by now.

Dave

[vittorio]

Dave,

I am sorry you took it my linking as spamming, anyhow I took away all links from my previous reply.

PR subdomain was born as an eDating DEMO to sell as a php-program suite, there was [and I left it as such ...as I still hope it] a chance that it would have become a programmers' PR too.
To tell the true I hold that directory for the large additions I made on the file manager of that suite and as a reference to my own work.

phpBB-Forum suite idea came afterwards and is well coupled in my headings as complementary directory and includes a lot of php code and links to examples and tutorials and basic knowledge which are of free access.

Regarding to your suggestion of taking off the links in memberslist.php output, I cannot do it as I would offer no promotion to my quality members.

Definetely of eDating there are only the files and I am aiming to asserve them to my MEMBERS willing to write an extend profile of theirselves as I did as ADMIN-profile [Blob]
Anyhow there is no doubt for misinterpetration on what I am layoutting in the main PR, sofar is full of technical explanations and info.
Do you see any typical-eDating attractive PIC in there ?
Do you think anyone would join for a romance my eDating ?
The site is not cosmetically designed as an eDating website !
So why do you keep asking and frustrating me, what for a forum is it ?