By Lee Sykes
October 2009
In this tutorial we demonstrate the techniques we have recently implemented in the forum on DNN Creative for dealing with spam.
On DNN Creative we use www.activemodules.com Active Forum, rather than the DotNetNuke core forum, but the techniques demonstrated in this tutorial will be adaptable to the DotNetNuke core forum, or other modules that allow comments and potentially receive spam.
In the first part of the tutorial we demonstrate the steps we took initially to encourage the spammers to leave the forum. If you are also receiving spam posts in a Forum or Blog then these initial steps may be enough to discourage users from posting spam before you have to take it to a new level using techniques such as SQL.
We then demonstrate how to analyse the data in the DotNetNuke SQL tables to view user profiles in the forum and how to build SQL queries which prevent users from posting spam into the forum.
To finish the tutorial we show you how to setup SQL queries to be executed on a schedule so that the data in the forum is constantly updated.
The videos contain:
Video 1 - Introduction, Basic Steps for Discouraging Spam
- Introduction to the forum spam problems
- Initial steps for discouraging spammers
- How to disable a user account
- How to add filters for spam keywords into the forum
- How to add filters for spam URLS and emails into the forum
- What are the options?
- Automated moderation using SQL
Time Length: 10min 28secs
Video 2 - Typical Spammer Profiles, Giving Users Trusted Access Using SQL
- How to view the typical spammer profile details
- How to view the DotNetNuke tables in SQL Server Management Express
- How to view the contents of the Forum user details table
- How to update all users to have IsTrusted = "True" status using a SQL query
Time Length: 7min 41secs
Video 3 - Creating the SQL Query to Combat SPAM
- How to find the tables that contain the user profile details
- How to identify the profile details in the ProfilePropertyDefinition table
- Explanation of the content in the UserProfile and Users table
- How to design a select query in the editor
- How to add filtering into the query based on a typical spammer user profile
- How to refine the query
- How to change the query to an update query
- How to update the tables so all users who are not spammers immediately receive IsTrusted = "True" status using a SQL query
- How to make the query more efficient
- How to view the updated forum user profile data
Time Length: 11min 54secs
Video 4 - How to Schedule the SQL Query
- How to schedule execution of the query using OnyakTech Host Commander Module
- How to schedule a SQL job
- How to set the forum to be moderated
- Summary, pros and cons, posts to be aware of
Time Length: 5min 53secs
Total Time Length: 35min 56secs
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