I do not have any addons enabled on our boards except Spam-O-Matic.

I have disabled the vB built-in Spam settings.
I used the built-in RSS feed manager.

I then made a test as the default "admin" user as the RSS user.
I posted to both public and private boards.

My "Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count" is set to 6
My "Auto-Moderation: URL Count" is set to 0
(no URLs alowed if you do not have at least 6 posts, unless you are mod or admin in which case these settings are ignored)

Nothing was auto-moderated.

If you are still being auto-moderated perhaps it is based on keywords. I can't duplicate the problem.

When you have more details that explain how to use it easily for everyone including what to disable and leave enabled that is vB default I might be back :p, I can understand how to make it work and know how to install but look at your three pages, perhaps clean up the first mod post and include known or common bugs and or what to disable etc so people will not need to scroll thorugh several pages to find or you say "That is covered in post #5" etc etc.

Long story short I cannot believe that you developed this mod without even looking into the pre-built functions... Now I've made an honest mistake before but imo you should have shown a way to increase the capabilities of the default functionality in vBulletin 4 or simply made an add-on that enhanced it all, not to be rude but that is IF you actually did your homework.

Just my 2 cents you can give me a refund later but for now keep it in case the next person needs a penny.

I'm not using ANY keywords ...

Now I'm confused again .... :D

So, based upon what you just posted, I did this ...

Auto-Moderation: URL Count (Set to 50)
The maximum number of URLs a user can post in a new thread or reply.

Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count (set to 0)
Minimum postcount required to avoid keyword and URL moderation. If user has a higher postcount than this number, their post will never be auto-moderated. This does not effect moderators and admins.

The mission is simple for me.. I just want the darn auto-moderation turned OFF, so there's no possibility for it to affect Admin usergroup RSS auto posters or any other auto poster.

I also want it to check Akismet for spammer's posts for the very first post only (any user group), just as it does now with the standard default vBulletin Akismet function. I assume this mod still does that, even with auto-moderation turned OFF?

Thanks for your help ... :)

Regards,
Badger

OK Superman, here it is so you do not have to read 3 pages:

Disable the built in spam settings in vBulletin and use Spam-O-Matic instead.

There is not enough feedback yet to list "common" bugs or known issues, that is why I have reserved the first post for FAQ. This thread is here to find known issues, take feedback for enhancements, and bugs so they can be added to the main page.

Badger,

To turn off auto-moderation, set Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count to 0. Nothing should be auto-moderated in this case.

Spam-O-Matic runs every post from every user through Akismet for every post always every time.

A future version may have an option to only check the first "x" posts that a user makes using the Akismet service.

You might be able to do what you want to do by disabling Akismet (remove your API key and/or set Akismet: Auto-submit from Moderation Tools to "No" in Spam-O-Matic and then using the vB Akismet services which better do what you are trying to accomplish.

Thanks ... :)

I think that's what's happening and why our registered member with 18 posts got stuck in moderation. Spam-O-Matic is checking every post through Akismet, instead of only checking the first post (that's when you nail spammers), which is the way we had the VBulletin Akismet set (stop checking after first post).

I'll turn OFF your Akismet and leave ON vBulletin's until you are able to add that option. I'll also continue testing for you ...

Regards,
Badger

There's enough confusion on the first three pages that need to be made very clear, you might think I'm being rude I just want everyone to actually benefit from your mod, if they can't understand something or become confused because it's not made clear in the actual Modification post then they will quit and not even try to install you should know this from being on here so long "Join Date: 22 Nov 2005".

Also, posting on page three will not save others from searching up until page three or backtracking if this ever reaches let's say page 40 etc so simply modify the modification info and put that bold text up there ;).

Ok back to work for me, you handle your mod, like I said I like the concept but was simply taken back reading your post about being unaware of the default settings especially since your a "Host" that most likely releases free mods to get more vBulletin clients.

@Badger
Thanks for the feedback and testing :)

@Superman
Changed first page (again) the mod is only a few days old to for release to the public so yes the description being constantly updated. Hopefully the first page says everything there is to know now. FAQ also added.

Still waiting to here if there are other users that have RSS issues, I can't duplicate them. If you find a way to duplicate the problem with specific examples, let us know.

Quick question. I installed the mod and ran into users getting tagged by akismet checking every post. I will disable that feature after reading the previous posts.

I was looking at the logs and it lists like 116 entries. I just installed the mod today and I know I have never had 116 new registrations in one day. Where are all these log entries pulled from? I am just curious since I see a lot of usernames that say "Allowed registration" and I don't see them in my member list.
I did notice that some of the usernames are linked, which leads me to believe that those specific usernames are legit new registrations for my site.

Thanks for this mod. We are hoping it catches the spammers trying to register so we don't have to worry about them

Yes, the linked users are the ones that were really allowed registration. There is a known issue with the logs making duplicate entries and sometimes saying "allowed registration" for users who were really not allowed.

It will be fixed in a later release, it is a cosmetic bug and not a functionality bug.

As for the high number of log entries, that is normal even without the dupes. There are lots of bots running around out there that get denied on the default human verification settings or just give up or die in the registration process. Spam-O-Matic tries to tag them all.

wow, I forgot all about the bots not getting past the recaptcha stuff. Thanks for the info. I really like this mod. Good job and thank you for sharing.

Great mod, thank you - this will really help reduce spam.

I have 1 problem with it at the moment. When trying to ban a spammer, I get a 404 because (for security reasons) I changed the name of both modcp and admincp folders but your mod does not recognise this. As this is such a common situation, you really need to add those variables to the options page.

Sure! glad you like it. Don't forget to give the mod a rating and vote it for MOTM :)

I will put it on the list for possible enhancements if this is something that a lot of other people want. Though I think that if you ask around, the moving of those directories doesn't really do that much good and is more of a hassle than it is worth when dealing with administrative tasks such as mods and upgrades.

Ok, update ...

Still getting members placed in moderation and can't find a pattern as one had over 500 posts and the other just 2 posts. One thing in common was that they posted one (1) link in their post.

Settings in Spam-O-Matic as follows:

Auto-Moderation: URL Count = 0 (academic since according to previous instructions, the "Minimum Post Count" at 0 should turn OFF this function anyway)

Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count = 0

Akismet as handled by Spam-O-Matic was disabled ...

Vbulletin Akisment was left ON ....

So, before we un-install Spam-O-Matic and go back to vBStopForum mod which was working fine (even with vBulletin's Akismet running), we're going to turn vBulletin Akismet handling OFF completely and turn Spam-O-Matic Akismet handling ON, although checking every post of every user group is a waste of time most of the time (really needs that "above x posts not checked") function.

We've left the moderation settings at "0" and "0" ... hopefully disabled. ;)

Anyway, let's see what happens with this set-up, which is now mutually exclusive to the two Akismet handlers.

Thanks .. :)

Regards,
Badger

I also had the issue with legit members getting their posts put into moderation. We have had zero spammers make it to posting in 2 years with about 4400 members registered and a couple hundred thousand posts. Our big thing is catching them when they register and booting them before they do harm. That is why this mod rocks, it does a lot of the leg work for us.

We have a forum that is specific to a certain activity, so we added some mandatory fields in the registration that would be well known by people that would join up, but spammers just end up typing "test", "asdfg" or "Russia" or whatever. Combined with manually approving new registrations, this dropped our spammers to zero.

We disabled the checking of the posts in the forum because it is not really needed right now.

On a side note, we did find that a few years ago we had some spammers sign up and just start sending spam via private messages. We simply made it so new members with less than x posts cannot pm. once they hit the magic number the pms are turned on. When that first started, we found that we caught every spammer with the standard akismet anti-spam that came with vbulletin, and deleted them before they could do harm. This mod catches the spammers before we even have to deal with them. nice.

This is a nice mod.

I'm not talking about moving directories, I'm talking about the common practice of renaming them. This is supported as standard by vB. There is a setting in config.php that allows you to do this easily witout any upgrade hassle etc. It's a standard thing and this mod either needs to get the setting from the vB config file or if that's not possible, allow the admin to configure it on the options page. Any security conscious forum admin will do that as standard.

Extract from config.php:

Sorry, I was thinking of the Linux commandline when I said "Move" which is the Windows equivalent of "Rename." I usually work in Linux so I got your idea and was talking using Linux speak, sorry for confusing you.

As I said we have it on the list, based on if many others need this we will consider it. AFAIK this "renaming" is not very popular, but we will see.

OK. Can you give me a workaround in the meantime?

I found 2 instances of "modcp" in functions_vbghsfs.php on lines 290 and 534 and changed them to my own modcp name and although I no longer get a 404, neither the remove or ban actions will work. I get an uninformative message and when I click OK, nothing happens.

Attachment 120598

Unfortunately I can't give you any workarounds at this time as we are busy working on other more pressing areas in the current version like improving the logs and improving the Akismet functionality.

Once we are done in those areas we can probably spend some time looking at your request, but these were not part our original plans so it will take some research for me to be able to give you a workaround., well, one that works properly anyways.

If I find a workaround, I will probably just include it in a future release instead of in a random post in this thread which will be unlikely to be read or found.

Ok, another update ...

Still getting members placed in moderation and can't find a pattern as one had over 644 posts and the other just 8 posts. The 644 post member placed a post with one (1) link in their post while the 8 post member just mad a regular post with nothing obvious that would trigger it being placed in moderation. :confused:

Settings in Spam-O-Matic as follows:

Auto-Moderation: URL Count = 0 (academic since according to previous instructions, the "Minimum Post Count" at 0 should turn OFF this function anyway)

Auto-Moderation: Minimum Post Count = 0

Akismet as handled by Spam-O-Matic is ENABLED with ID.

Vbulletin Akisment handling was OFF ...

Not sure what to do next, but as much as we think that this mod has nice potential and its author is making efforts to sort it out, we're going to have to un-install Spam-O-Matic and go back to vBStopForum mod which was working fine, even with vBulletin's Akismet running concurrently.

Perhaps we'll try it later on when the "kinks" have been worked out ...

Thanks for everyone's efforts ... :)

Regards,
Badger

Not sure what you mean by "Akismet as handled by Spam-O-Matic is ENABLED with ID." sounds to me like you have some strange setup or the vB Akismet is conflicting.

If you want me to have a look PM me your admin logins so I can see what you have setup. I'd like to see the moderated posts as well.

I meant that I put in the field you provided my actual Akismet ID, which I thought you'd might want to be aware of for your trouble shooting. ;)

Running vb4.04pl1 with nothing odd about it other than pretty standard add-ons that I bet at least 50% of people here run as well .... and to reiterate, vBulletin's new Akismet "Anti-Spam" option was turned OFF in the recent testing as per your suggestion.

Have gone back to vBStopForum mod for now, as I can't afford to have 13,000+ members sending me emails at all hours of the day complaining about their posts being moderated when there's nothing wrong with them.

Will happily do more testing as future releases come out and more people post results, including any validated conflicts.

Thanks for your efforts .. :)

Regards,
Badger

Sounds good. It sounds like your specific issue is related to Aisemet checking every single post. Akismet found something in their DB that triggered a flag to moderate the post.

This will be changed in the next version to be more flexible in regard to which posts to ignore.

I agree with you ... :)

In my opinion, checking every post of every user group is a waste of time most of the time and if you added an option to NOT check above x posts, it would solve this problem.

Regards,
Badger

OK, so I set the folder names for modcp and admincp back to the default and tried using the options in the user manager but I get exactly the same problem. A strange alert box as shown in the image attached to my previous post and nothing happens. The mod does a fine job of preventing spammers from registering but it doesn't allow us to ban or remove users.

What am I doing wrong?

That's the first I have heard of it.

Are you running any other mods?
Are you running the original mod or the one you modified?
Have you tried a different browser?

Mod Installed Perfectly. Hopefully it can hold up to spammers now :)

I need help with this mod...

a user signed up earlier on my forum today, then emailed me saying he signed up, got confirmed, but could not get on, I looked for the user up and down, and vb showed nothing, then i looked in spam-o-matic logs...and this is what it said...

Spammer Found and rejected.

I did not even get notified, nor did it place him in que for moderation..if the user tried to signup again, then it will just flag him again..

1 why did the mod not send him to que so i can decide if he deserves a ban?
2: why was i not notified at all?
3: if he does not appear in vb records, then how can I unban his IP from spam-o-matic
so the system does not flag him again? I see no record that he exists at all, yet he
can not signup or login...

This sucks..

wth..

And did it tell you why he was found and rejected? (IP, Email, Username)

You will need to read the description of this mod more carefully.

1 )It does not email you each time it tags a spammer, your inbox would be flooded with junkmail from Spam-O-Matic. Instead it logs them.

2) It does not place users in a queue for moderation. It places posts in the moderation queue. If they are not registered, they can't be queued.

Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the answer to my first question, why was he banned in the first place?

1. There is no user moderation, there is post moderation.
2. Spam-O-Matic logs things, it does not email about them
3. You can't unban his IP from Spam-O-Matic because Spam-O-Matic is not where the "banned" IPs are stored. Those IPs are stored on StopForumSpam.com which is where Spam-O-Matic gets its data from. So if your user is tagged as a Spammer because of his IP then you can turn off IP checks or you can tun your cache down to something lower than the default 90 days.
[/QUOTE]

Version 1.2 has been released with new goodies, primarily fixes and additional settings for Akismet and Auto-Moderation.

Enjoy!

Installed! Thanks for sharing.

[/QUOTE]

You are asking me why your mod banned him, seriously? Was he in the spammer Database, and that was why he was rejected? He is helping me, so I knew he is not spamming my forum, soI am not sure what he does on other forums, but regardless, it flagged and rejected him instantly...We need a way to white list users that we know, what I do not need is a maybe or maybe not he will be flagged and rejected again, if it flags him again, I will disable the mod as useless..if it will not give users a chance to plea their case if they are flagged on mistake, or if they are rejected, at least throw the user into a user group for review and for them to have a way to at least contact admin just in case they may not be a spammer.

What I wasn't asking for were rude remarks, threats or demands.

I am writing a program for you for FREE and was willing to help you for FREE to remedy your specific problem. Asking people for things nicely goes a long way.

I was asking what the log said was the specific reason for the ban.

Usergroups are coming in version 1.3 but you can get by without them if you look at the logs to see why they were banned (username, email, IP) and disable that check or turn the "StopForumSpam: Remote Expiry" down a bit to something like 10.

I was not rude. I am telling you how it is.
What threat?
I am not demanding anything. You can surely do what you
want with the mod. I will run it or I won't.

Thanks for the update :)

I'm getting this error when making a new post after installing the update

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_BOOLEAN_OR in /home/xxxxxxx/public_html/includes/functions_newpost.php(433) : eval()'d code on line 29

What about existing users? Are there any plans to check existing users against stopforumspam and offer the possibility to delete the users?

Sure thing :)

Hmm, have you tried re-installing it? Do you have any other modules or manual template modifications running on your boards?

We considered that in the beginning but it presents some problems, especially on larger boards. StopForumSpam has a 5000 query per day limit, so we did not want to overload their servers. Boards that have more than 5000 members would have to setup a scheduled task and that could take a very long time to complete. The other issue as that most spammers are caught right away and rarely come back to do anything if they have not already done so in the short period of time after their registration.

Yes uninstalled and re-installed, same error. Got loads of mods and a few manual templates modifications.

I've gone back to v1.1.2 it works fine for me :)

Right now my boards exists since few years and your modification has just appeared. In the long timeframe there were many spam account. Some I deleted manually, some not. there are around 350 accounts which are suspected to be spam accounts. Deleting them manually would require much efforts. vBulletin does not offer automatic deletion of them.

Automatically scan and delete/ban accounts would be a real help with this. There are not only boards out there with over 5000 accounts. Just the effort to manually check them is huge.