Thread

(I’ve just moved this question to Technical Support - I think this is a better place for it.)

There has to be others dealing with this one ...

My site requires registration and login in order to listen to audio. I intentionally have no link to the “edit_profile” page.

Yet, myriads of forum spammers are intent on getting to the bio field to drop in gibberish copy spiked with URLs of sites that apparently pay them to do this. They find the form, and they drop their “stuff” into it.

I assume they get there by adding “member/edit_profile” to the address line in their browsers.

I’m thinking of re-directing the edit_profile page to the home page - is that a good way to handle it?

What’s really the best way to deal with this? Or should I just let them go at it? Is there wisdom around this?

(I’m using 2.4.0.)

Thanks!

  - Mike Hickcox

Please delete me. Sorry.

I saw your other post and tracked you over here. I may be too much the hacker but I would use a .htaccess rule to kill this:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} edit_profile [NC]
RewriteRule .* /index.php [L]

Wow, Chris - this appears to be a very efficient code-demon approach.

But I don’t know what you take for granted - that is, where would I put this code?

- Mike

Oops. Open or create a file called “.htaccess” in your document root. That is, the same folder that contains your main “index.php” file. Note that the period is at the beginning of the file name.

Guess I should explain what this code does? It instructs Apache (your web server) to redirect any request that contains “edit_profile” within the address before EE begins to load.

Hi Mike,

I’m sorry you are dealing with Forum/Member Spam.

Chris offers a very elegant solution via .htaccess

Keep in mind that this will prevent anyone from accessing the edit_profile template. If you don’t need that functionality, then this is a fantastic option.

Let me know if you have any other questions.

Thanks for the hand Chris!

Cheers,

Thank you for the great advice!

BTW - Chris - I saw you signed up on the site and tried to email you, but it bounced.

- Mike

Hi Mike,

It’s our pleasure to help.

If you need anything else, just let us know!

Cheers,