Administrative and Maintenance Tools - Moderate New Registrations Based On IP Geographical Origin

Original 3.7 mod here.

This mod will put any new registration into moderation so you can either approve or deny based on the physical location of the IP address. If the IP is located in a country that you white list, the registration will go through as normal.

This may be different for everyone else, but on my forums, I have yet to have a Russian IP sign up for anything other than posting SPAM. This plugin has moderated them all!

I hope to have time to eventually expand this to do other things.

You MUST download the zone files from this site:

http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks/ (download the "all files" file)

The free license does not allow me to include them with the product, plus it is better to download the latest files anyway.

No real screenshots to show here, sorry.

Changelog:

12/20/2008

• Coded the routine in, instead of using external whois program.
• Now compatible with Windows
• (39 download of 1.0) (3.7.x)

2/11/2009

• 77 downloads at this point (3.7.x)
• Rewrote application to use zone files rather than relying on Arin

To upgrade, READ THE README, and re-install product (select overwrite).

Don't forget to:

CLICK INSTALL!

[graham_w]

Thanks for the mod. I reversed it so the list would be a black list instead of a white list and seems to do whats required. Thanks again.

[intelgio2]

I have installed the app and get the following message after trying to register. This comes up after entering all of the information on the registration screen. Any ideas?

"Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 52 bytes) in ...whois.php on line 35"

[Jafo232]

Sounds like the IP lists are too much for the small setting you have for max memory size in your PHP.ini file.

[skwestle]

I need help to upload the folder inside the upload directory to my forum root. Can anyone help me with this?

[Cyburbia]

This looks like a fantastic mod! This cold be the key to cutting my htaccess file down by 75% or more.

However, there's one issue. On my board, there's a few countries where a small majority, but not all new registrants, are spammers; India, the Philippines, and China. (Yes, I get legit users from China, but about 80% are spammers.) Right now, using .htaccess, I direct the bulk of IP blocks from those countries into a page like this:

http://www.cyburbia.org/notice/forum_registration_india

A disproportionately large number of those that have posted spam to the Cyburbia Forums register from IP blocks in India. Unfortunately, most if not all users that have previously registered from this IP block have been forum spammers and "black hat" SEO (search engine optimization) service providers.

We welcome new users from India, but we want to make sure they are not spammers. If you intend to be a constructive and active participant of the Cyburbia Forums, have a genuine interest in urban/town planning (planning student, or employed in planning or an allied profession such as architecture), please send email to cyburbia (at) cyburbia (dot) org with the following information:

* Your real name.
* Your desired Forums username.
* Your location (city or municipality, and state or union territory).
* A sentence or two about why you are interested in joining the Cyburbia Forums.

We create accounts by hand for registrants that look legit. (We've actually had a couple of people write to messages like "I would very muchly please like to promote web site SEO kindly do the needful and approve please", but according to our logs, thousands of others do'nt bother.)

It would be nice to have something where some countries are blocked from registering entirely (Former Soviet republics, Nigeria, Pakistan, Satellite IPs, Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria, Nigeria and Nigeria), while others can register, but they have to complete a few sentences about why they want to register. If they look legit, approve and send a form email. If not, deny.

[djbaxter]

^^^ That's a fine idea.

Originally Posted by graham_w

Thanks for the mod. I reversed it so the list would be a black list instead of a white list and seems to do whats required. Thanks again.

I've also reversed it. It would be preferable to have this as the default. It makes a much shorter list to type into the options.

[Daryn]

This is a nice mod, I've been getting a lot of crap users from Russia mostly. So this will probably help out alot. Just a couple questions though:

1. For this mod to take effect what settings do I need to have on in vB?
2. For a future version, could you put in the option to make it a white/blacklist?
3. Instead of having to type in the text string for country codes, could you have the mod parse the zones and display a list of them with check boxes?

Thanks.

[djbaxter]

Originally Posted by Daryn

2. For a future version, could you put in the option to make it a white/blacklist?

You can already do that: See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...20#post1767120

Originally Posted by Daryn

Instead of having to type in the text string for country codes, could you have the mod parse the zones and display a list of them with check boxes?

If you use the blacklist version, all you have to do is type in a few country codes. Listing them all in a checkbox list or drop-down would be a huge list.

[Fynnon]

i really hate russia for historical reasons but to say that every russian that comes to your site is a spammer that is really hazardous

there are many us spammers, actually usa is the "best" in the world when it comes to spam

anyway a mod for blocking spammers by ip is a very good

10x

i fear that the database from http://www.ipdeny.com/ipblocks could be somehow false - positive in some cases because for one bad user you could block 100 good ones if they use the same ip

[Daryn]

Originally Posted by djbaxter

You can already do that: See https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...20#post1767120



If you use the blacklist version, all you have to do is type in a few country codes. Listing them all in a checkbox list or drop-down would be a huge list.

You can already do that, but you have to modify the mod to do it, which means you have to make that modification every time you update it. If something is needed by a lot of people it should be a setting and not an edit. Not to sound like a jerk, but it's the most basic in usability theory.

And a checkbox list would be a lot easier than having to open up an external text file, search for the country, take down the code, go back to the ACP, put in the code, go back to the text file, etc...

At the very least, having a link in the ACP to an alphabetical list of the countries and codes would make that easier.

In case you're wondering, my area of expertise is usability and accessibility, it's what I do a lot of work on.