Help to deter people from copying your content!

[Oblivion Knight]

Tired of people copying your content? Defend your site with a plagiarism warning banner!
I came across this site quite randomly on Google, and thought it was pretty darned clever. Copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com) will scan any given page, and look for copies of it throughout the Internet..

If you wish to add a banner to your vBulletin, save a banner from their banner page (http://www.copyscape.com/banners.php?o=f) and name it as copyscape.gif, upload it to your images/misc directory, edit your footer template and place the following below the copyright stuff:
<div class="smallfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.copyscape.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/copyscape.gif" border="0" alt="Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape" title="Do not copy content from this page. Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape." /></a>
</div>Using rel="nofollow" means that you aren't simply increasing their search engine rankings or whatever by using the banner. Unfortunately, I can't find any method of making the link point directly to the page that is displayed on as this would be hugely beneficial - but perhaps this isn't possible.

------------------------------------

Darkwaltz4 has cracked it.! :)

If you would like to make the banner link point directly to Copyscape searching your forum's URL, use the code posted here (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost.php?p=808546&postcount=4) instead of the code above.

[GrendelKhan{TSU]

Tired of people copying your content? Defend your site with a plagiarism warning banner!
I came across this site quite randomly on Google, and thought it was pretty darned clever. Copyscape (http://www.copyscape.com) will scan any given page, and look for copies of it throughout the Internet..

If you wish to add a banner to your vBulletin, save a banner from their banner page (http://www.copyscape.com/banners.php?o=f) and name it as copyscape.gif, upload it to your images/misc directory, edit your footer template and place the following below the copyright stuff:
<div class="smallfont" align="center">
<a href="http://www.copyscape.com" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><img class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/copyscape.gif" border="0" alt="Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape" title="Do not copy content from this page. Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape." /></a>
</div>Using rel="nofollow" means that you aren't simply increasing their search engine rankings or whatever by using the banner. Unfortunately, I can't find any method of making the link point directly to the page that is displayed on as this would be hugely beneficial - but perhaps this isn't possible.

very cool. gunna do this. :D

thanks for the info!! :)

[Gizmo5h1t3]

interesting, il give this a try!!

[Darkwaltz4]

hold on a second! i have EXACTLY what you are looking for with this :) im coding it up so it might take a second~

i might even release it as a minor hack if you think its that good

*edit* okay, try this one on for size! Clicking the image should take you to copyscape with the results of your search :) Unless I got the $url variable wrong, I wrote this in 5 minutes without access to the 3.5 files to check >.<

First again, add that banner as specified in the first post, then edit the footer template and place this:


<div class="smallfont" align="center">
<form name="query" method="post" action="http://www.copyscape.com/" target="_blank">
<input name="q" type="hidden" value="$vboptions[bburl]/" />
<input type="image" class="inlineimg" src="$stylevar[imgdir_misc]/copyscape.gif" border="0" alt="Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape" title="Do not copy content from this page. Plagiarism will be detected by Copyscape." />
</form>
</div>


enjoy! works extremely well :-p REQUIRING POST VARIABLES WILL NEVER STOP ME! MUAHAHAHA! also, did you know its easy to break the common hack by writing your own forms and submitting information that the system cleaned before spitting into hidden vars, and stupidly doesnt clean it AFTERWARDS? :-p always make sure your safe from stuff like this!

Edit, the variable has been fixed :-p i applied this to my own forum and it worked exactly as expected :-p if you wanna see it, look in my profile for my forum link (please dont try to join my forums yet though). and yes, it uses the variable, not hardcoded :-p

[Oblivion Knight]

Hrm.. Doesn't seem to work for me.

Perhaps they've found you out already? ;)

[Darkwaltz4]

Nope sorry, i was using the wrong variable :-p i applied the correct one to my post RIGHT as you were posting that :-p so recopy whats up there ^^ and it will work :-p

Alternatively, you could use $vboptions[homeurl] instead of the bburl, but keep the trailing slash (the option requires you to ignore it, but i would rather copyscape was happy with the completeness of the url). heck, you could put whatever url you want in there (hardcoded). you could even dynamic it up to search that EXACT page your staring at :-p

Also, i noticed that copyscape more like searches for large matching swaths...so practically every vbulletin matches my vbulletin because its using the basic style. great to see whos stolen your styles or uses your hacks OR WHATEVER :D

[Oblivion Knight]

Awesome, thanks for contributing! :D

[Darkwaltz4]

Also of note, clicking on that sends a bot under the ip address of www.googlealert.com, which the homepage has the same appearance of http://www.copyscape.com/signup.php and says its from the same place in small letters at the bottom. not sure how great this is, or if they alert google that they should check the site themselves to make sure it isnt plagurism. Lots of people sending alerts to google accidentally through this service might get them banned from google i have no clue :-p just some kind of 'should probably investigate this a little further just in case' thing ^_^

Glad to help! i liked the idea very much and i wasnt going to be stopped by stuff like that! i test my own hacks to see if someone can write their own form, and NOT EVEN UPLOAD IT, to exploit stuff in my hacks :-p

[ambumann]

Great! Thanks alot!

[amykhar]

Their service isn't that hot from my very limited test. It accused a bunch of sites of plagiarism from my site - and the content isn't there. It picks up the stock vbulletin guest welcome and considers that plagiarism. Not much use for vbulletin owners.

[Darkwaltz4]

It doesnt CLAIM that it is directly plagiarised, simply finding places that happen to match large portions of your content. Usually (although widespread things like vb and hacks like that are exceptions) content is wholly unique, so it will be more successful in finding sites that did rip you off. Its still up to you to click those links and check. Its done with a machine so it does it mechanically :-p For instance a site who simply paraphrased your content would most likely not show up.

[idwf]

Their service isn't that hot from my very limited test. It accused a bunch of sites of plagiarism from my site - and the content isn't there. It picks up the stock vbulletin guest welcome and considers that plagiarism. Not much use for vbulletin owners.

You could ofcourse, just whack one of the images on your site??? sure it doesn't so anything, except look as if youre protected?

[dodgechargerfan]

Neat. I'd like to use this.
I know it's not a fool proof method but just stating that there's protection is better than nothing.

I'd like to have this show up in only one forum though.

Could I save the code in a template then make a plugin that uses a conditional to load the template?
This is new ground for me, so be gentle. ;)

I've got the conditional figured out as I just put in the "disable printable version" mod with a conditional on the forum id instead of the user id and it works great. I want to do the same with this banner code, but I'm guessing the code above wouldn't live well inside a plug in (I'm guessing).
or would it?

[bashy]

Hi...This dont seem to work for me.
When i click the image it just refreshes the page

Any advice please?

[Zachery]

This is a year later ;)

[bashy]

Yeah i know, the search facility works well :)

[Spangle]

Installed then removed.

It's good but too fussy, it doesn't find plagiarised content it finds common phrases, which is not what you want