Description: This mod is merely an attempt to discourage spammers from hitting your reviews through logging of IP addresses, adding rel=”nofollow” attributes to links, and a few other, little things.

Please note that this is NOT going to stop everyone and I can’t guarantee this will stop them if they’re currently hitting you. I’m not even sure when the spammers got tired of trying to hit my reviews and moved on.

The general idea behind this mod is that we’re trying to make it difficult enough on them that they decide to move on to easier sites.

As usual, I can’t take total credit for this mod. Tammy, Carissa, and Seiji helped me a lot as these mods were taking shape.

Also, a note about IP addresses. IP addresses change, especially with dial-up users. They can also be spoofed or the spammer could have a relay set up so they post from an impossible variety of IP addresses. They simply aren’t a good way to control anyone. On my site, we mainly use them for statistical purposes and passive behavior control. However, that being said, one of my worst spammers seemed to be posting from just one ISP out of China. I banned the whole ISP for about six weeks and the spam from that person stopped.

I should also explain what rel=”nofollow” does. rel=”nofollow” is an attribute you can add to hyperlinks that tells search engines (especially Google — [1] [2]) not to figure the link in when their determine page ranks. Since the spammers are attempting to increase their page rank, this means they aren’t benefiting by spamming your reviews. Again, it doesn’t stop them… it just makes your reviews less appealing.

If you wish, you can skip adding the rel=”nofollow” tags to the links pointing to your reviews. Just make sure you leave the link replace function alone so it can add the nofollow tag to any links anyone attempts to leave.

For this mod, I used files from the latest release. (2.0.7, 28 Aug 2006 patch) The line numbers are all approximate and will likely change as you progress through this mod. Please consider them simply a guide to put you into the general area.

Requirements: eFiction 2.0.7 — Please make sure you are completely up-to-date

Difficulty: Intermediate - Advanced

Mod History:
12-November-2006 — Released mod to public
13-November-2006 @ 12:28am — Fixed a mistake. For line 97 of reviews.php I wrote chapter.title as title instead of series.title as title.
14-November-2006 @ 6:44pm — Added explanation of what rel=”nofollow” does
01-December-2006 — Solved edit review bug

Demo: http://www.lunaescence.com/fics/search.php?action=tens&list=reviewedstories

Files Involved:

• viewstory.php
• series.php
• reviews.php
• func.reviewform.php
• storyblock.php
• seriesblock.php
• languages/en.php

Instructions:

Well, after much hunting, I finally discovered what had happened.

Apparently, someone had hacked into Jasson’s Gutter Club and had created a hidden directory. Inside that hidden directory was the spam form.

So, I’m sorry Jass — but it had to go. The gutter directory has been completely nuked.

Frankly, I’m about ready to hand off my Flea fanlisting to someone too. I can’t afford to have some idiot hacking into my site, just for the purpose of sending spam. Since they use the same system (PHPfanbase 2.0), Flea is at risk too. Though probably not as much risk as the idea of an Adult Humor fanlisting.

What’s more, I visit the site to see if maybe there’s a patch and I discover a rather cryptic post set right around the time I had all those hacking problems declaring that there’s security issues, but they won’t go into any details.

Well, screw it. Netbunch never did get back to me, they deleted my support ticket and have basically ignored every request for help I made. I need a new host…