Stop Post Spam In VB 5
 

Hello everyone,

I have a forum that is powered by vBulletin (you can see it here: http://www.relationshiptalkforum.com)

However, I am having sleepless night because of spammers. I visually stay awake all night deleting spam post.

I see that some forums have been able to combat this problem by not allowing new users to make post with URL until they reach a particular post count.

So, I started making research yesterday on how I can achieve this on my forum. And I came across a thread here on this forum that offers a free plugin/hook that I can install on my forum. However, when I tried installing this plugin, it displays this message; "XML Error: Not well-formed (invalid token) at Line 1"

I guess it's not compatible with my version of vBulletin, because my forum runs on vBulletin 5.3.0

I need suggestion on a similar plugin that will work on vBulletin 5

I mean a plugin that will allow only user with a particular post count to be able to make post that contains URL. For instance, a user must have at least 10 post count to be able to make post with URL, and if the user has less than 10 post count and attempts to post content with URL it disallows the post.

Thanks for ant help.

Can you post a link to that plugin?

I looked at your site and you're still using the old Recaptcha. I recommend you use Recaptcha v2 (the "I'm not a robot"). It will not totally stop spam but should be more effective in minimizing them.

Here is the link to the plugin: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...hlight=spammer

So, how can I get the Recaptcha v2 setup on forum.

That plugin is for vB3. Plugins for vB3 and vB4 are not compatible with vB5.

For Recaptcha v2, you configure that in AdminCP > Settings > Human Verification Manager. You need the Recaptcha v2 Public key (Site key) and Private key (Secret key). You can get them from https://www.google.com/recaptcha

You can also look at installing ZB Block. It's excellent at stopping spammers. We have been using it on our forum since late 2012. It is a rarity that a spammer gets through.

Is it compatible with vB5?

well, i still use an old trick :

i use a custom profile attribute mandatory at inscription and with a list of possible values.
The attribute is basically "write the number 11 in plain text" and the possible values are Eleven, eleven, ELEVEN,...

This way i only have "manual" spammers, which a way easier to manage.

Most of the automated methods aren't that accurate lately, this particular one is better and of course you can/should combine it with a different method such as reCaptcha 2.