TBH, there is no way that this could create a thread if someone, or a bot did not properly follow the verify email link.

I can look into adding it to the mod queue, but a simple solution, is to have the threads post in a hidden forum, and once you verify the new user is not a bot, them move the threads out into the right forum.

I'll try that for now thanks.

If you are getting hit with bots, I suggest the following:

This will stop most of the spam bots that auto-register:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=294633

This gets alot of human spammers because they still use early IE:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=268208

This stops registration by any device on blacklisted host names.

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=279110


NONE of the above use captchas, puzzles, questions or other such nonsense that merely annoys legitimate users, and have been rendered obsolete anyway for the most part, by autospam programs such as XRumer.

I asked Fillip, and he has no idea, so it looks like this will be on hold for a bit. :(

Strike the above, I figured out a way, it is not pretty but it works. I will update the mod maybe tonight or tomorrow.

I know what's going on here. The mention BB code needs the user ID number in order to work.

Yep, so I have found a way to get it in there with a big hammer and a crowbar. :p

Nice work Ozzy, always good to see you guys putting in work for us little peeps! lol...thanks Ozzy, you guys seriously do so much for us and "I" personally appreciate the heck out of your guy's work as it gets my site's members for active all the time with the great mods found here at vbulletin.org..you guys rock!

Thanks for the kind words. I am glad you like the mods, and appreciate the work that goes into them.

With the added compatibility with DBTech's Advanced User Tagging, in the update tomorrow there will be two more options for admins to use, Ability to set the threads / posts in moderation, so you can see if the new user is a bot before moving the thread / post out of moderation, and the ability to set it to show the posters signature or not.

Nice Ozzy! This is really some good stuff here you have going on man ... yer' da' Man !

This is excellent news. :up:

Just to mention (:D), it didn't worked even when I used @$username in message. Then you could see @test10 (user's correct name), but mentioning didn't worked. Even if it was quoted, it didn't worked.

But, glad that you figured out what's the problem. :up:

The way it will work when I release it is in the Message, not the title, you will be able to use, (without the * of course) instead of @$username

There may be a bit of a delay, I got tied up yesterday debugging some stuff on my site.

This is excellent news.

But there's something funny that just happened. The mod created three welcome threads without user actually being registered.

Time stamps of threads are:

18.12.2013, 16:21:24
18.12.2013, 16:21:33
18.12.2013, 16:21:34

In place of user name, there's nothing, as no user actually registered. I'm using option that they have to confirm email address.

At that time one user probably tried to confirm email address, or did something, I have for that user this info in ACP:

Time of last activity 18:21 (no seconds in ACP).

So, there's something that this user did what triggered creation of thread although there were not actual successful email activation.

I need to mention, on my site there are sometimes situations when users post double posts when they try to post single. This is vB bug, or something, as this should be prevented if they try to post same post too soon. I use vB 4.1.12.

So, this three threads could be result of this, or something related.

Anyway, part of checking if user actually confirmed email address has an error, or at least it didn't worked on my site for some reason.

I would be willing to bet it was a bot trying to register, bypassing the actuall register page and doing the registration auto.

Got delayed again, I hope to have it out before weeks end.

I made one mistake when I wrote my previous message, user actually had activity at the same time threads were made (16:21, not 18:21). I suspect these threads were made by activity from this user.

Also, today after I left mod running, I have more similar threads without name of user (so email confirmation process didn't worked through).

In one instance, there are two threads created one after another, and in other there are three threads created in array.

I'm not convinced it's the bots, there would be much more threads, I think that actual people probably try to confirm link, doing something wrong, not sure what as I always was able to confirm link without any problems when I registered test users.

This is really something hard to pinpoint, because sometimes mod works fine, no multiple threads, and sometimes there are multiple threads without users name.

Bots hardly ever successfully register on my site, if they do, I think that they are actual people, who manually do registration process and are able to bypass registration checks.

EDIT: I just noticed one more "empty" thread, but it looks paired with actual registration.

Time stamps of threads:

Empty: 19.12.2013, 8:28:35
With user name: 19.12.2013, 8:29:15

So, after 40 seconds, there's thread created with user name. I assume, user tried to confirm email, didn't succeeded and 40s after that was successful and thread was created with his name.

All these multiple threads are seconds apart, I really doubt that this is bot activity. Anyway, I added to my "arsenal" this mod: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=294633 so I now have two of three mods that you suggested for bot stopping from registering on my site (don't use at the moment Hostname or Useragent Registration Ban).

EDIT2: I tried to find if there's last activity for certain users who still need to confirm email address that corresponds with multiple thread creation and I found for triple threads user that probably triggered creation of threads, for double I didn't find, but it could be for more than one reason, e.g. user maybe later successfully confirmed email address (more than a few seconds later, so it doesn't "link" created empty threads, and when I say empty, I mean threads without username), or it could be attempt from "older" user and I didn't manually checked enough users.

So at the moment I have only one multiple threads created that maybe is from bot's activity, but it's not certain. It also could be legitimate user doing something that triggered threads creation.

That's really strange. I wish there was a way to replicate it on demand. I will try to see if I can replicate it and figure out what is going on before the next release.

Yes, this looks like something hard to replicate.

Probably you could try to register, but before actual successful email confirmation, try to "play" with test user, for example, surf site, maybe even go to link for manual email confirmation, or use invalid confirmation link...

Anyway, try to create these multiple threads without username. This happens, but what users actually do, I can't tell.

Problem also is, I could try to ask users (I have one user who probably triggered thread creation without name), but I'm not sure they would be able to describe meaningfully what they did. They usually not very tech savvy and they certainly didn't pay attention to what they are doing. :(

Also, if you find out what's actual users' behavior who trigger thread creation, I could try to explain to my users who have problems confirming email address what (not) to do. I have relatively lot of people who fail to confirm email address, but I think they just have problems with computers and internet in general, not that something is really wrong with my setup, as there are many (including myself) who manage to register without any problems.

Any chance to add the registration details in the thread content?

What details?

The information they entered during registration

Some of that might be private though, I don't see a need to post that out to the whole community.

Perfect--- Installed and set up in 5minutes.

Thanks, glad ya like it, and thanks for marking as installed. :)

Ozzy, I love your mods, I really do but expand your train of thought, not everyone uses VB the way you think. :)

This would be a perfect mod from one of my clients that uses VB only as a DB and not for forum use. There are many mods here that some would think are ridiculous, but there are many different uses for VB then one would imagine.

The problem is I would have to know the exact fields that are filled out during registration. If you add some extra fields, they need to be taken into consideration. I have seen sites that have upwards of 15 extra fields, so I would have to know each one.

Sure it probably could be coded to auto read them, but would it not be easier to get a mod that would read the info from the DB, then display it in a table?

Installed and working very well!

Thank you.

Glad ya like it, and thanks for marking as installed. :)

Seems it is not going to be as easy to implement the DBTech's AUT mod as I thought it was. I can get it to show up in the post correctly, but the user gets no notification of the mention, nor does it show up in either members profile.

So I am going to have to put this on the shelf for a bit till I can really dig into the code to figure out a way to make it compatible.

I hope you'll find a way to achieve this. :up:

And yes, it would be great if multiple threads would be solved somehow. It could be moderated after they are created, but in a way it beats the purpose of having mod to automatically create welcome threads, when you need constantly keep an eye on it. I know it's hard to reproduce, but something creates these multiple threads.

EDIT: I found out how to reproduce multiple threads. Actually it's very easy, at least on my site.

Register test user, have in settings that threads is created after email confirmation and when you receive email, don't use correct email confirmation link, use one that's incomplete. For example:

This is correct link for my test users:
It's enough just to "shave off" a bit of code at the end, like this:
Using link like this will produce multiple threads creation. It usually produced two threads, but in one occasion (yes, I tried it multiple times, it triggered multiple threads constantly) it produced three.

Also, you can use link for manual activation, by using this link:
http://slobodni.net/register.php?a=ver

Just don't use correct email activation code and you'll have multiple threads. Actually, it seems that if you click very fast on the button after you try to enter code, you get as many multiple threads as many times you clicked on the button. Didn't checked out this thoroughly though, but you can certainly get multiple threads this way also.

Please try testing on your site, I hope you'll have same results and I hope you could solve this problem somehow. I'll change email message, enter more info for users, but they usually don't read instructions, as I see that error message they receive after this is actually acurate, but to no avail. :(

Just found this: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=82693

I know that you know much more about coding than me (actually, almost everyone knows more about coding than me :D), but it looks like parsing problem to me. Anyway, if this link helps you in any way, great. If not, I hope you'll find a way to sort things out. :up:

It may help, but I don't think so, I believe what needs to be done is when you mention someone in a post, what ever AUT writes into the mods tables, needs to be done with this mod also. So I need to go through what tables Fillip updates, and add that to the posting hook of this mod.

Well, can you execute your mod in a way that you send text to later parsing, what will activate AUT (or whatever mod for that reason) and it will parse text as if it was posted by user?

Also, I wrote it before, even if you quote text made by your mod, mentioning doesn't work, which looks strange to me, like this text isn't same as if it was produced by human (regular user).

There's something strange with this.

Try to quote text, parsing should work all right with quoted text, but it doesn't.

As I stated earlier, I got it to show correctly.
Now the issue come in with integrating it into the AUT mod, updating the DB with the same info as if you were making a post in the front end like normal. The way any auto posting mod works, is it inserts the post info directly into the DB, thus bypassing any mod that runs on a new post, so if you want something added to it, you have to update whatever you want when it inserts it's info.

I thought it's possible to mimic real human actions somehow with mod. :(

Anyway, you know better than me.

Did you managed to replicate bug with multiple threads created when you use invalid email confirmation link?

I have not got to that yet, I will have to test it out on my dev site, don't want to blow up the live one. :)

Actually, it safe, it only produce empty threads (without username, but with rest of welcome text), i.e. it triggers only your mod. But yes, test it in environment where you can spot what goes wrong and how to correct it. :up:

This nis a great MOD

Thanks, don't forget to mark as installed. :)

I was still using the older version like this one just happened to notice Ozzy made a new one!

Thanks for keeping stuff like this alive it really makes hosting a website that much more enjoyable!