Starting around midnight, I'm going to start implementing my fix to the spambots that have been spamming the CAOS website. I hope my fix doesn't disrupt any normal activity, but it's possible that at times the site may not work correctly. However, I will always be reloading the website whenever I make changes to ensure that CAOS is not down for more than a few seconds at a time, if any at all.
My fix is to create images with text that must be entered into a text box when new users register. These are known as computer-aided programs to tell computers and humans apart (CAPTCHA), and I'm sure most of you have already seen them.
This won't stop humans from manually spamming, but if we really have been having bots hit the site, it should at least stop them.
I know that this is a little late to be asking, but if you're not dead tired after you're done working, could you take a look at the PHP RSS code (http://matthewthomas.dyndns.org/~matthewthomas/Projects/RSS/CAOSRSSFeed.txt) I wrote to see if we can have an rss feed for the CAOS posts?
Most of this code came from my senior project, but since I'm not sure how the database tables are for this site, I really can't write anything more than psuedo-SQL.
Thanks Mike!
I will try to take a look when I'm finished, but I will likely pass it onto Justin Camerer to see if he can integrate it, assuming it looks good.
Okay, I have great news! The CAPTCHA images appear to be working for CAOS. I think they should be a standard feature of Xoops, and I'm going to contact Xoops about it to see if they can add my code or some derivative of it.
If we have to add CAPTCHAs anywhere else, we now have a code base for it. Hopefully we won't have to do that, though, because CAPTCHAs are really annoying when they're used for everything.
Ninja Grim takes down the spambots :shuriken:
Thanks Mike!
...did someone say my name?
Yeah, Matt was wondering if RSS feeds could be added to CAOS. His pseudocode looks good, but I found an unofficial (i.e. check the code to make sure it's half-way decent before trying it) RSS module for Xoops that you could install. I left it in the CAOS' home folder if you login using SSH.
Think you want to install it? You are, after all, the official CAOS webmin! :-D Oh, and to put a cherry on top, I have even backed up the website and database for you so it's all ready for your hands. ;-)
Uhhhhhhh..... uuuhhhhh..... uuhhhhhh....... Im on vacation...
Sure, ill try to take a look at it when i get back home.