Hi Guys
We have launched a high profile forum and our focus is switching to moderation and management.
We have the Censure pro plugin, which helps for post and topic moderation. However we have a problem with members photos and 'about' fields containing inappropriate content. Typically these users don't make any posts so they don't show up in moderation.
The members page in the admin 'page=wpforo-members' is not that helpful to manage this kind of issue and would be 100% improved if we had the following fields.
- user registered date (so we can sort by the recent users)
- about field (show the field so we can search it)
- avatars (show these like they are shown in the WP users listing
Perhaps in Custom member fields plugin it would allow you to define which fields to show in this admin page. It could boost appeal.
I'm interested how others manage this problem? Would Akismet help reduce this?
NB: we have recaptcha on signup so this is not a bot issue.
Thanks
Mistral
Hi Mistral,
First of all, I'd suggest you use some additional plugins allows approving new user's registration.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/approve+users/
Check out Robert's recommendation in this post:
Here is an article on How to Moderate New User Registrations in WordPress. It also may be helpful:
https://www.wpbeginner.com/plugins/how-to-moderate-new-user-registrations-in-wordpress/
Well it is simpler and better to catch those BEFORE they register/enter. And not after. In a busy forum, it is impossible to check all profiles etc etc.
So you use recaptcha. It helps, still not that good.
My suggestion
Use a security plugin. The Shield or if you have a good and fast server WordFence. Use those two plugins, on at a time, and see how it goes.
Both offer bot and fake registrations protection. WordFence even realtime against a DB they have.
Thanks both for your replies.
Unfortunately we cannot add any barriers before a user is registered. Even if we did, the users could simply wait until they are approved then update their avatars and about fields.
Yes, we are running the free version of Wordfence, but since these are real users I'm not sure how this would help?
We do expect to have to manually moderate, which is why I asked if additional columns could be added to make this less onerous. The end-game is to click the 'ban' button so they cannot use the email again. Right now you would need 2 screens open, to view and filter the WP users then find them again on the Wpforo members page. Even adding a ban button to the WP edit users page would make a difference.
An other suggestion to minimize your problem. Not sure if it will help you or not, just an idea (i also have implemented for other purposes along with The Shield plugin).
https://wordpress.org/plugins/cidram/
That will block a LOT of strange IPs but NOT users/Seach Engines etc IPs. Blocks are mostly from ranges that belong to hosting companies (OVH, DIGITAL OCEAN, QUADRANET and other INfamous IP ranges).
This is what a lot of human/bot spammers (and hackers) use somehow, webhosting IPs.