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Censoring

Censoring user-generated content#

Site administrators will commonly want to censor certain words or phrases so they do not appear on their sites when posted by visting users.

XenForo has a comprehensive system for censoring content in this way, which is accessed through the Censoring section of the main XenForo options system at Setup > Options > Censoring.

To censor a word or a word fragment, enter your term in an empty Words to censor box. You may use a * wildcard character to match any text:

  • dog matches dog only
  • dog* matches dog, dogs and dogmatic etc.
  • d*g matches dog and dug etc.
  • d*g* matches dog, dug, dogs, dogmatic and duggery etc.

Note

The censor words are not case-sensitive, so any combination of DoG, dOG, doG etc. will match dog.

Each censor word will normally be replaced by a repeating string of the Censor character, which is an asterisk * by default. A three-letter censored word will be replaced with three asterisks ***, while dogmatic, having been matched by dog* will be replaced with eight asterisks ********.

Special replacements#

Alternatively, each censor word can have a replacement word, so you could have dog replaced with canine by entering the replacement word into the Replacement box next to dog.