Do you allow guest posting on your forum?

[TCG2007]

I think it's the worst thing to activate, you think you can participate freely, you write your message and while you want to publish it we force you to register! It's like free offers where you're asked for your credit card. I'm running away!!

turn that off, just allow guests to post replies. done deal. have yet to have any issue.

 

[zappaDPJ]

It's not something I've considered but it's interesting to note that those in this thread that have guest posting appear to have had a positive experience while the majority of those who don't have it assume the worst.

How many pornbots leave gross imagery on your site?

None, never, not a single one in over 20 years of running multiple forums. What am I missing?

 

[TCG2007]

We are half general interest and half auto site. Guests will comment on build threads to ask questions and then the Google guests are usually commenting on local and random niche threads. Its not a tidal wave but I try to keep the cost of entry barrier as low as possible and it hasn't backfired yet.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

How many pornbots leave gross imagery on your site?

Zero. Never had one.

 

[Anthony Parsons]

I think it's the worst thing to activate, you think you can participate freely, you write your message and while you want to publish it we force you to register!

Agreed, which is why I don't use it. I allow guest posting on my public forums and I am lucky to get 1 to 2 spam guest posts per fortnight / month on a 1.8million post forum. I have around 18k uniques daily with, in essence, no spam. Certainly none that ever reaches members/readers.

If you have annoying spam, you're doing it wrong.

The best thing you can do, use Cloudflare, in the WAF activate only known good bots, activate all their bad bot protection and AI scrapers/bot ban, all stopped at your DNS, not your server, and totally FREE. Literally removes EVERY single spambot from ever reaching your site. You then only have to deal with real people at that point, which are easily thwarted by also activating moderation on guest posts. Literally zero spam ever reaches your readers / members, as people spammers give up once they realise they cannot easily spam your website with any effectiveness.

 

[GW2]

As others have suggested...guests should not be able to post on your forum.

Here is how I control...or approve "guests".

1. A guest can see the home page, various forums & thread titles, but not the contents of the threads or posts. A guest cannot post.

2. A guest can choose to register...subject to certain IP address restrictions & spam control measures. A "guest" who successfully registers, is then placed into the "registered users" group and can then see the contents (posts) of the various forum topics & threads.

3. At this point, a member of the "registered users" group cannot send or receive private messages to/from other forum users.

3. The first post by any "registered user" must be approved by a moderator or admin.

4. Following moderator or admin approval of a first post, a "registered user" is promoted into the "validated users" group.

5. A member of the "validated users" group can post without restriction including sending & receiving private messages.

.

 

[TCG2007]

Wow, I can't believe how strict some of you are. Especially when forums have enough problems luring people away from all the social platforms and reddit.

Innocent until proven guilty...why put so many barriers in place? Especially for people that may be experiencing a forum for the first time. If I can't access content in a timely manner or feel like I'm being gatekept, I bounce.

 

[TCG2007]

I should probably expand. I get that no site is the same, no guest, traffic, etc is apples to apples...so in some cases, you just need those barriers. With my site being mostly a local or regional community, I don't have much issue with spam, BUT I do have registration on manual approval, along with a plugin or two to help out.

More national or larger sites, I get it. Gotta do what you gotta do.

 

[GW2]

...why put so many barriers in place? Especially for people that may be experiencing a forum for the first time. If I can't access content in a timely manner or feel like I'm being gatekept, I bounce.

It is all about preventing spamming & scamming. Folks who are interested in my forum can easily register.

 

[TCG2007]

It is all about preventing spamming & scamming. Folks who are interested in my forum can easily register.

 

[GW2]

I should probably expand. I get that no site is the same, no guest, traffic, etc is apples to apples...so in some cases, you just need those barriers. With my site being mostly a local or regional community, I don't have much issue with spam, BUT I do have registration on manual approval, along with a plugin or two to help out.

More national or larger sites, I get it. Gotta do what you gotta do.

My site includes users from various countries. So, I need some degree of control over your typical scammer from Russia and other rogue countries.
The registration arrangement I described above works well for me...i.e. I rarely encounter a scammer or spammer.

 

[Rusty Snippets]

…… The best thing you can do, use Cloudflare, in the WAF activate only known good bots, activate all their bad bot protection and AI scrapers/bot ban, all stopped at your DNS, not your server, and totally FREE. Literally removes EVERY single spambot from ever reaching your site. You then only have to deal with real people at that point, which are easily thwarted by also activating moderation on guest posts. Literally zero spam ever reaches your readers / members, as people spammers give up once they realise they cannot easily spam your website with any effectiveness.

^^^ This!! These Cloudflare settings cut bot/scraper traffic to almost nil!!

 

[Anthony Parsons]

My site includes users from various countries. So, I need some degree of control over your typical scammer from Russia and other rogue countries.

Cloudflare fixes all these issues... has done for years. Nobody in the past 5 years should have spambots. Scammers is a bit different... but you can also narrow down any automated traffic to only humans, guest or registered, with Cloudflare WAF and its automatic verification systems. Again, all FREE. Using any other DNS provider nowadays is just silly. I know, I've used a lot of different ones over the years. CF... solves every issue I have faced managing websites in the last 30 odd years (well, since the Internet became the Internet).

 

[welington]

This forum is a friend.
we have the same content attached.
Members here there are no moderators for approval of topic content.
I have little experience, but I see how the bot or spm attacks. This image below shows



yellow arrow - normal limbs topic
red arrow - topic in English, pornographic post.
If I was wrong, correct me.
We are Brazilian forum, electronic content boards.

 

[Brian Jones]

While we allow all to read our whole site and even download most resources we will NEVER allow guests to post. You will have every malicious poster appear from the net and spend 90% of your time removing junk that has 0 need to be on your site. Advertisments to porn, you name it you will see it.

 

[welington]

this friend's forum MyBB.
That's why I love XF

 

[Anthony Parsons]

this friend's forum MyBB.
That's why I love XF

Software is irrelevant... XF gets heaps of spam without decent prevention. Just add cloudflare, and it doesn't matter what software you have. I have wordpress sites, all allowing public comment, and I don't get spam on them as they all have cloudflare as the DNS with appropriate firewall settings.

 

[new_view]

how do you turn it off?

 

[Mr Lucky]

I voted no but may try an experiment. Provided it’s moderated there may be no harm. I wonder how long the experiment will last.