[PLUG] web forum software

Elliott Mitchell ehem at m5p.com
Sat Jul 15 01:16:03 UTC 2006


>From: "Michael M." <nixlists at writemoore.net>
> A blog I've been reading, BikePortland.org, has a public forum component 
> that has been hit by spammers.  Jonathan Maus, the guy who runs the site 
> is looking to replace the forum software with vBulletin, which he says 
> is $85 for a one-year license.  You can read his post about it here:
> 
> http://bikeportland.org/2006/07/13/help-me-fix-the-forums/
> 
> I was just wondering if anyone knows of any free (as in beer) 
> open-source forum software that might be appropriate and has good 
> security options.  Unfortunately, he doesn't say in his post what 
> software he was using, just that it was free, but I gather from the 
> comments to the post that it was phpBB.  Someone else recommended 
> bbpress.  JM seems kinda set on vBulletin, though he appears to be open 
> to suggestions.  Anyone have any?

Spam came to Usenet and at first it wasn't too big and people deleted it.

Then it became largish and people installed basic filters. Some groups
moved to web-based bulliten boards to escape the spam.

The spammers responded with measures that bypassed the filters.

The e-mail game of whack-a-mole ensued which continues. The web-based
systems sat back and grinned thinking because they didn't use SMTP.

The spammers kept the game of e-mail whack-a-mole going. They noticed the
motion towards web-based bulliten boards and responded.

Now it is clear for all to see that aside from pissing folks off who
thought Usenet was pretty effective, that web-based boards don't avoid
the spammers.

Moving to another system will merely continue the game of whack-a-mole.
If that is the only reason, then don't bother, they'll be back and you'll
of annoyed some of your fans. Porting Spam Assassin to work with other
things would be a partial solution, though it is still merely
whack-a-mole. The irony is that it was the variety that made web-based
systems take a long time to attack, yet now this variety makes a general
filtering a lot more difficult.


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