Lil Help?

[Andrew Longman]

My younger brother has run a political website for years.

http://www.boomantribune.com/

Seems he is facing a major upgrade to the site and is looking for advice

It has a smallish but influential following. He talks to folks in the White House several times a week. I've seen stories he broke show up as major segments that night on the cable news shows.

I expect many will not agree with his political leanings, but he's my baby bro and this is most of what he does, so I am asking the best experts I know for a lil help in his moment of need.

Any suggestions regarding his situation, here: http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2012/4/3/201324/4931 ?

[datachicane]

Don't apologize, I think most of the spectrum is represented here.

I'd be thinking about moving to something supported if I were him, there's a number of free options out there. Any reason he needs to keep unrestricted registrations open?

[WickerBill]

First, my guess is that the spam is automated, which means someone out there has created software which knows how to manipulate his posting system. Often, simply upgrading to a newer version will close some of those holes.

However, I don't know if he's ever going to have any real peace as long as he allows anonymity and open sign-ups. Our community here is tiny, but we would be overrun by spam if we allowed non-member posting and/or open sign-up.

[extramundane]

Any reason he needs to keep unrestricted registrations open?

I used to run a local news microblog for several adjacent neighborhoods in my part of town and, even at that microscopic level, we found that open commenting helped keep dialogues going. I know of at least 2 city officials who commented anonymously simply because they could comment anonymously. Spam comments were an issue at times, but it was a manageable issue due to the combination of built-in Wordpress capabilities and 3rd-party plugins. In the 4 or 5 years since I quit doing that on a daily basis, I'm sure tools have improved even more.

Andrew- if he doesn't get any bites, I can pass along contact info for a local outfit I worked with in the past. I've no idea what their going rates are these days, but converting a site over to Wordpress or something equivalent is the kind of thing they could typically knock out in pretty short order.

[nrc]

If you're going to have open registration or open comments you pretty much have to have some kind of human verification. Check to see if there are add-ons to do either Captcha image verification or one of the other standard human verification mechanisms.

Captcha cut spam registrations 90% here and a human answerable question killed the rest.

[Andrew Longman]

Thanks. That's all more than I knew. I will pass it along and get back if he needs more help.

[Indy]

Thanks for the link. Me likey.

[Napoleon]

Thanks for the link. Me likey.


I figured you would.

[Indy]

:laugh: