Guest Book getting spammed--need help.

[Alex Ethridge]

My father-in-law has a site on a FutureQuest server ( www.buffalogal.org (http://www.buffalogal.org) ) where he promotes his book. He was a B17 pilot during WWII.

His guest book ( http://www.buffalogal.org/cgi-bin/signit.cgi ) is being spammed and I need to put in some kind of prevention for this. I am not a programmer and know almost nothing about coding, HTML or any other. I have, however, managed to get into his guest book and remove the offensive material; but, this is not practical because it would require continuous monitoring.

I would like some kind of guest book that would e-mail me the contents of every guest book entry as soon as it is entered. Also, it would be nice if I could incorporate one of those ever-changing images that requires someone to read some somewhat scrambled letters and enter those correctly before the guest book will accept their entry.

I am open to other suggestions and might be willing to pay someone to set this up for me in the event it is too complicated for me.

[Matt]

Take a look at www.hotscripts.com for a pre-built guestbook script that is sure to meet your requirements. -Matt

[Alex Ethridge]

That basta*d is putting those peter-stiffener ads in the guestbook so fast I can't keep up. I finally had to just delete the page until I can figure out a solution.

Thanks for the link; but, I don't know what I am looking at there nor have any idea how I would use a script if I found the right one.

[frankc]

Hi, Alex. Well, installing a script is pretty easy. How 'bout you find one you like the looks and features of, and we'll help you through the install?

Neat site! I set up a site for my Dad's Army unit in WW2 (33rd "Golden Cross" Division, 108th Combat Engineers, Co. B). The company clerk is still alive and well and wrote a wonderful book about their days in the Phillipines, New Guinea, Luzon, etc. but it's been self-published. He's had about 50 copies printed and I think I'm close to getting him to release it to me for e-publication. I SO want to share the book with everyone, it's an important view on history.

<added later> Start here (http://www.hotscripts.com/CGI_and_Perl/Scripts_and_Programs/Guestbooks/index.html).
<added even later> Look for a guestbook that has a bad word filter, disallows multiple posting from an IP within a certain time range, IP banning, and the ability to turn html in guest's entries on and off.
<still later> Also see this listing of guestbooks. (http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Guestbooks/) (Active Guestbook (http://www.active-scripts.net/) looks to be very full-featured.)

[Slim]

His guest book ( http://www.buffalogal.org/cgi-bin/signit.cgi ) is being spammed and I need to put in some kind of prevention for this.

I'm so sorry. Yes, it's a real pain to maintain a guestbook these days - I'm administering one for a site for a rare disease, and it is really important to keep the guestbook up, as it is a way for those affected to find each other.

I use a couple of techniques, and probably should investigate some more.

I moderate the guestbook, which is to say that entries that people make don't really become visible till I visit the site and approve them or delete them. That keeps the really objectionable stuff out of view of the real users. That's a feature of the guestlist I used.

I don't allow entries without comments, or entries with any sort of URL encoding that spammers try. Those get filtered out with a response to any human trying telling them why their message can't be encoded. Th

I try to keep the guestbook out of the view of the search engines (google, etc.) so that spammers can't find them that way. Real users will find them on the web site when they visit.

I also change the address of the guestbook (the name of the guestbook html pages and the cgi-bin program that is used to add to it) on a regular basis, so that spammers who find it and keep using it will need to find it again. I've set up some mostly automated processes to do that.

I still get quite a few spams I have to reject - their were a dozen over four day holiday weekend, and there's only 1 or 2 good entries a month. It's probably time to rename the files again.

It sounds like you're ready to give up on the guestbook, and if you don't really need it that might be the best solution. But if you would like to try to make one work, and are willing to put some work into it, I'd be glad to lead you towards some of the solutions I've used.