Thread

I am aware that Expression Engine has a number of anti-spam and security features. I have also read about some Akismet implementations for EE…

Do these features extend to the Discussion Forum?  What can a person do to safeguard against forum spam in advance?

Thanks!

I’d have to dig to see if Akismet applies to the forum.  I’d tend to think so, but haven’t used it myself.  That said- the forums tend not to get much spam because membership is required to post.  The standard anti-spam measures can be used to protect membership- captcha, secure forms, Akismet should definitely work there if you want to add it, blacklist/white list, require email confirmation to join. Check the list under Spam Deterents for an overview.  In other words- they have to get past quite a few measures to join- and they have to join to post.

We do get some on this forum- but manually deleting and banning is easily manageable.  If they’re willing to manually join up and post, there isn’t a ton you can do to block those.  Though blacklisting known trouble areas does help considerably.

That help?

Yep, that is definitely helpful.

I am investigating this for a client that I suspect will have limited time/resources for spam management. The standard features sound like plenty enough to get us started!

Thanks!

I’ve run a number of forums systems from vBulletin to Invision to phpBB and Expression Engine’s (since the first release) and I can attest that EE’s forums are rock solid, dependable, and come with most of the features that users and administrators need. The integration to the rest of EE is decent.

As to user spam, the very nature of forums memberships means you cannot really control the first spam entry. Users sign up on their own and can post on their own. However, I’ve set up EE’s forums so that any posts are also emailed to administrator and moderator accounts, so spam gets identified quickly and the user is either banned or deleted with just a few clicks. Zero tolerance works. Spam comes but it isn’t a regular occurrence, and certainly not much of a bother.

For EE sites in general, I have some with live commenting and others with moderated commenting. Spam seems to come in streaks.