MyBB Community Forums

But, I was wondering if it is possible to remove the Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2010 MyBB Group.

I know there's a lot of booing and hissing going on here over this one but let me state my reasoning for this.

I love MyBB, best free software you can get IMHO, I also donated to the DOT COM purchase.

ISSUE:
If you do a Google search for Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2010 MyBB Group

You will note that there are over 3.2 Million links, very impressive MYBB!
However, because of this spammers are slamming the crap out of my sites just to register, approve email address, and use there signature to direct a link to there sites.

Don't believe me? Type in Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2010 MyBB Group. + WHATEVER THE NAME OF YOUR WEBSITE IS.
Everyone of mine that I use MYBB on came up, so I know its in the list of 3.2 million links.

I know spammers are an ongoing problem but if people can find every one of my sites by just searching for the Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2010 MyBB Group wording, it becomes a pain and devalues my desire to use MYBB.

Is there any way MYBB might consider giving us the ability to remove this without losing our support? Or at least come up with a better way of protecting our information created largely by the Powered By MyBB, © 2002-2010 MyBB Group wording!! Id be willing to pay a fee for that ability!

I'm open to any suggestions here.

A. I will not set my forums to admin approval.
B. You cant disallow members not to have a signature.
C. I just want to stop these lames that are coming in droves to my sites just to add a freaking link to there website via the signature. It used to be just Gmail address but now they are coming from everywhere. The users are always using 4 letter and 4 numbers as there username, although not all of them do it in this format. I thought about requiring 10+ letters for users but it would just be a matter of time before they get around that to.

I have not upgraded to 1.6 yet, has anything been addressed regarding this issue in the newest release?

I am open to any and all suggestions, I know other users are going thru the same problem I am!

Come on MYBB need to help me protect my members info!

$50.00 times 3.2 million = $160,000,000
Humm might be something Id consider if I was a developer

Chris Boulton will have to answer this one.

Paid support for removing copyright is still something we're looking into, but you're more than welcome to replace the text with an image that still links back to us and says 'Powered by MyBB', that way the text won't come up in Google, but the link back is still there.

I didnt think of that one! But after doing the math Id be all over allowing people to purchase a little license. Maybe you guys could come up with a text to image replacement that way it is approved by you and presents your script in the light you choose.

Thanks for the response guys, everything about MYBB is top notch!

While the search for the copyright line is the most obvious search choice, it's still easy to make a similar search query in Google which will also only yield MyBB forums. Basically you can go through the MyBB language files in inc/languages/english/*, pick any string that looks unique enough and does not contain variables, and Google for that and you will find MyBB forums only, because only MyBB forums use that particular wording.

So in regards to protection against spammers, removing the copyright does not solve any issue, assuming that the spammers are not stupid. Which they, unfortunately, usually aren't. They're pros (at making money with spam that is).

What you need to do is find out how those spammers (if they are bots) are registering in your forum and prevent them from doing so (by using a better captcha, adding an extra question, or approval process).

In my forum, guests are allowed to post, so spammers don't even have to register. All they have to do is solve a captcha, which, unfortunately, they are able to do (with human help, i.e. captcha harvesting techniques). I fight the spam somewhat efficiently using custom filter rules. It helps that my forum isn't English language but most spam is, so anything that's English and has links is suspicious.

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(2010-08-05, 11:19 AM)MattRogowski Wrote: [ -> ]replace the text with an image that still links back to us

It's also possible to Google for sites that link back to MyBB. That's just it, there are countless ways to have Google spit out all sorts of MyBB forums. Google is just to powerful if you want to be found in Google in general, but not be found by spammers, there's just no way to achieve that. Only thing you can do is opt out of Google completely (although there is no point to it if spammers already know about your site), but then your forum will likely just die if it's not bound to an offline community somehow.

Only way is to add spam protection directly to your forums, depending on what spam you get.

The image could be as simple as you opening up Microsoft Paint, using the text feature to type 'Powered by MyBB' in size 12/14 or something, and leaving it as that. We're not terribly bothered how it looks as long as it is clear, readable, visible and links back, can even be a nofollow link if people want to do that, not an issue; some people have done them in cool fonts and put the MyBB logo in it and everything, but something as simple as text on an image, see attached, would be fine.

[attachment=19152]

(2010-08-05, 11:32 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]It's also possible to Google for sites that link back to MyBB. That's just it, there are countless ways to have Google spit out all sorts of MyBB forums. Google is just to powerful if you want to be found in Google in general, but not be found by spammers, there's just no way to achieve that. Only thing you can do is opt out of Google completely, but then your forum will likely just die if it's not bound to an offline community somehow.

True, but there are more sites that link to mybb.com (even more to mybboard.net) than just forums. I guess lots of small preventative measures would eventually do some good.

Thxs Matt.