Is it possible to rename the forum to General Life or something, instead of just General, so as to cut down on the spam bots we receive? Since the move to forums.lusternia.com, we've gotten a tremendous amount of junk, all in the General Forums. Accounts made specifically to post spam. It's a nuisance to us, and a nuisance to the mods who have to clean up after it.

If it's at all possible, it would make coming here that much more enjoyable! Thank you.

I'm not sure how spam bots work, but how does changing the name reduce them?

Being on a forums.* subdomain with a forum named "general", basically makes us one of the easiest targets for spambots.

Changing either of these makes it much harder for bots to find and post in the forums.

It's not the Lusternia forum, there was a huge influx of Spam bots using hijaaked computer and new algorithms designed to defeat the anti-spam protections. This is why there has been a huge influx in spam nowadays.

If they're coded to look for the "General" subforum in an overall forum, they'll go right there. Most forums have a general, so it's a good way to go.


The ones targetting this forum at least are very basic in nature. They're all zeroing in on the General forum.

Have a look at the other IRE forums. They're filled with spam. And it seems to have happened recently too.

It can't realy hurt, and at most it's 10 minutes work.

Sure, why not. Just rename it to something with the same meaning as General.

I never thought of that! Great idea. Let's see if it works....

Changed to "Common Grounds" but am open to other ideas.

I hope it works-- all those spam threads really become a nuisance. Thank you!

Especially the one we had earlier about Brittany Spears...

Is that a Canadian spelling?

No, that is me being clueless on the spelling.

I think there have been five so far that we've removed about Brittney Spears, if I remember correctly, we usually nab them as soon as someone reports them. If I'm online, it sends an email to my msn, which says I've got an email from the forums, so I go here and check my inbox. Really quite irritating, and I don't know if something can be done about this, but, all of these are coming over as unregistered, so I couldn't even block them if I wanted. I don't know if Estarra is able to change it so that only registered users have posting permissions, or if we have to change the registration process.

Changing the name of the forum may help, but it won't stop the spam. I myself run a forum hosted by Invision, and we've had the same problems. Some ways to help cut down on spam include:
- alter the permissions of guests so they cannot see the member list or signitures.
- add a custom profile field that must be completed to register (i.e. favorite color).
- forbid guests from posting.

These will make the board far less attractive to spammers.

Good call.

It doesn't really matter what the name is, Common Grounds looks alright.

Well, she's changed the name AND the php number, so chances of bots getting in that way are slim. And Forcide, Guests already can't post, and how would stopping them from seeing signatures help O.o ?

Spamers search for forums where the signature is visible. Then they make dummy accounts that have links to their own website in the sig, driving up said website's rankings on search engines. Not permiting guests to see sigs just make the forum less attractive to spamers.

Ah, that explains it. Thanks!

In retrospect, this seems to have increased the amount of ads we get.