Restrict Private Messages to Public if not Enough Posts
 

This is a very small mod which will prevent users from sending private messages to anyone except the designated staff group (like admin) if they are below a certain threshold of post count.

Recently I've had two spam attacks in quick succession made via PM to dozens of my users in my community from spammers who verified their email address and didn't bother posting. Those are very annoying to find and clean up via the database, so better to stop it at the source.

There are two settings in the Private Messaging options section, one is the minimum post count needed to have free use of the private message system, and second is the sole usergroup they can contact via private message if they do not meet that minimum. For example, someone might not be able to post due to some technical issue, but still needs to tell the staff about it somehow! Besides, my particular spammers made sure they did not target any staff members...

I made this in about ten minutes to solve my own spam issue, so I will most likely not expand on it, but I will help with whatever minuscule support might be required.

edit: thank you similar threads for finding pretty much the same mod from a couple vb versions ago! I tried searching before I began but didnt find anything in the first few pages. Oh well, mine's slightly more straight-forward internally :p

<a href="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=177704" target="_blank">https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=177704</a>

Really good one.

I've been experiencing some of the same as a member of some other sites. Good work on this one :up:

Some people might not want all them other settings that come with cyb's mod.

Thanks Dark. :)

nice just what we needed :P

thanks

I know exactly what you're talking about. Didn't understand you were going to make the mod yourself, however... you can, because you're a coder.:)

Nice work Darkwaltz4, marked this one installed!

Ehmz... where can I find the settings for this? I checked the Admincp and the Vbulletin Options in ACP, but can't seem to find the setup options.

Thanks!

I've been using Group permissions and Group Promotions to control this for years but a mod helps. :)

The settings are in the private message settings for vbulletin. Theres just two.

:p I also noticed in the user editor that you can delete PMs sent from a user! Would have really simplified what I was trying to do :-/ but it seems to be working to stop it from happening in the first place, and several members coming to me asking why they got email/popup alerts about new messages, and nothing being there.