I am trying to combat spam on my boards. I understand that one of the ways bots find boards to spam is searching for the MyBB copyright message in a search engine.
I am wondering if MyBB would allow me to add <!--googleoff: all><!--googleon: all> to the copyright message so that google does not index it and therefore I won't appear on a search for the MyBB Copyright message.
If that would work (not seen that syntax before) then yes, that's fine. Alternatively, you can use an image with no alternate/title text so it won't get indexed, but still links back and shows the same message.
I think these tags are for special search appliances only, not Google search in general.
It's also even more likely that spammers don't bother searching for MyBB specifically, but for forums in general. Also spammers looking for MyBB can just as well search for any other moderately unique string that only appears on MyBB boards - pick any string from any of the language files that appear on publicly indexed pages and you end up on MyBB boards only. Besides, spam bots that already know you, will keep revisiting you, because you already are in their index.
So it won't help against spammers either way. Try a better captcha, or adding extra conditions to the registration process. There's a plugin called registration security question, technically the way it's made it's weak against spammers, but it helped me so far. It seems that spam bots are smart enough to handle any kind of captcha, but too stupid to answer a simple question if the answer is not simply yes or no.
(2011-02-09, 10:07 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]I think these tags are for special search appliances only, not Google search in general.
Under Excluding Unwanted Text from the Index:
http://code.google.com/apis/searchapplia...aring.html
(2011-02-09, 10:07 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]It's also even more likely that spammers don't bother searching for MyBB specifically, but for forums in general. Also spammers looking for MyBB can just as well search for any other moderately unique string that only appears on MyBB boards - pick any string from any of the language files that appear on publicly indexed pages and you end up on MyBB boards only. Besides, spam bots that already know you, will keep revisiting you, because you already are in their index.
It is very likely that they search for MyBB specifically. Spammers make bots that are specific to individual forums so that their success rate is near 100%. As for them searching for a string, it is easy enough for them to find boards with just a Powered By MyBB string rather than a more complicated to determine string. As for my site being in their index, it really doesn't matter because I have and will continue to ban/rangeban any ip addresses they have (in .htaccess).
(2011-02-09, 10:07 AM)frostschutz Wrote: [ -> ]So it won't help against spammers either way.
It will, and I really don't care what you think, I didn't ask here if it would work, I asked if I could do it without getting in trouble with MyBB.
EDIT:
Since implementing this change, I have had 0 spam bots compared to my 10 per day previously. Mission accomplished.
Believe what you will, fact is your site still shows up when googling for Powered by MyBB, so nothing really changed. And if you open up the site in the Google Cache and view the source code, it shows the googleoff / on tags as well. So your change does: nothing what so ever.
<strong>Current time:</strong> 02-13-2011, 12:58 PM</span>
...
<!-- begin footer -->
<div id="footer">
<div class="footertext">
<!-- You may NOT remove, modify or hinder the visibility of the MyBB copyright at any time. It must contain the links to the MyBB website and be formatted appropriately. Failure to comply with the above will result in prosecution to the full extent of the law. This is free software, support us and we'll support you. -->
<!--googleoff: all-->
<b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">Powered</b> By <a href="http://www.mybboard.net" target="_blank"><b style="color:black;background-color:#a0ffff">MyBB</b></a>, © 2011 <a href="http://www.mybboard.net" target="_blank"><b style="color:black;background-color:#a0ffff">MyBB</b> Group</a>.
<!--googleon: all-->
<!-- End copyright -->
</div>
</div>
<!-- end footer -->
Do this. Create an elegant image with MyBB.com in it and upload to your host. Remove the
powered by thing.
Use this code to represent mybb copyrights, which is safe not 100% but it helps the site not to index your credits.
<a href="http://anonym.to/?http://www.mybb.com" target="_blank"><img src="path to mybb copyright image" alt="" /></a>
<!-- You may NOT remove, modify or hinder the visibility of the MyBB copyright at any time. It must contain the links to the MyBB website and be formatted appropriately. Failure to comply with the above will result in prosecution to the full extent of the law. This is free software, support us and we'll support you. -->
Looking at frostschutz's post, you have this in your footer template. Unless I'm wrong, that's not the warning code on MyBB 1.6...
The warning code for MyBB 1.6 is:
<!-- MyBB is free software developed and maintained by a volunteer community. It would be much appreciated by the MyBB Group if you left the full copyright and "powered by" notice intact, to show your support for MyBB. If you choose to remove or modify the copyright below, you may be refused support on the MyBB Community Forums. This is free software, support us and we'll support you. -->
I doubt your using 1.6
Chances are they just edited the footer template at some point, meaning the template hasn't been reverted to default when that message was changed. The master copy will contain the new message, their current, edited one still has the old message.
Ah. I keep forgetting the possibility of users upgrading from really old versions xD