Sites breaking and spammers taking over with bots

[bobcallahan]

I have been building a system that new marketers can learn on and at a low cost. So I am using Pligg as part of the system. I became aware of the problem when Google took away one of the sites on adsense. The problem was porn and casino sites. The bots had put up 459 pages of pure crap.I had purchased a spam protector on the pligg forum store. I then cleaned out all the spam.

After cleaning out the spam on all three sites each one started not accepting the passwords I had for them. I attempted to change the password back and now all it will accept is the P/W generated from pligg. I tried to do an update and now the problems seem to have gotten worse as sometimes the sites let me in and sometime they don't. Two of the sites I can use somewhat, but with little control and trying to keep the junk out has been frustrating to say the least. One of the sites is completely blank with only the site with no content and will not accept any new post.

The two sites that are somewhat useable are: http://correctconnections101.com My Site - Your Source for Social News and Networking : These sites will only take the P/W generated by pligg and I think from what I see they only took part of the update.

This site http://bookmarkad.com: As I stated above is only sitting there with Adsense and will not accept any new post. I can still get into the site with my password, but it will not let me change anything.

I hope this is what the moderator wanted as I need to know if I just need to start over or if the sites can be fixed?

[UnderDogg]

Yes, it's a good description of what's wrong. I'll see if I can make sense of what to do and I'll get back to you.

[Yankidank]

I'm not sure if I followed the part about you having trouble logging in. Can you not log in to your own account?

What modules are you using your website? Knowing this might help us diagnose what might be preventing you or others from posting. It could be an overly protective spam filter, or it could be something like your template not being up to date and that causing a module like the CAPTCHA to fail.

[UnderDogg]

This site http://bookmarkad.com: As I stated above is only sitting there with Adsense and will not accept any new post.

User added correctly, logged in correctly. Tried to submit a story but then the message comes that I didn't enter the captcha correctly. There was no captcha shown to be entered.

All 3 sites have 1 single custom template.

[bobcallahan]

The bookmarkad.com will except changes in the user section and has the correct PW. The other two sites will not accept a PW change? Is there a module that I can install that would require a email verification before they could post?

[Yankidank]

By default Pligg requires users to verify their email account before the user account is activated. If you go to the user management admin page ( /admin/admin_users.php ), you will see email addresses listed with icons to the left to them. The green checkmarks mean that the address has been verified (they clicked on a link in their email while registering) and the alert icon means that they have not yet verified their account. Clicking on the alert icon will validate their email address for them.

If you want to turn off email validation for new accounts, visit Admin > Config > Misc > Validate user email and set the value to False. If you currently have it set to False, then set it to True to turn email validation back on.

[UnderDogg]

The other two sites will not accept a PW change?

I changed my PW a couple of times on those sites. I did it from the backend though, so maybe it only is a problem on the frontend. That's why we need as much info as you can give : Log in as user ... Go to ... (profile?) Try to change PW... Error message? Blank screen?

[bobcallahan]

I went into both sites and tried to change the PW, but it came back saying that the old PW is wrong and does not change.

[Danny]

Ok 1st of all the passwords changing is a bit suspicious, but in my experience if someone hacks into your site, they also change the email so that your password can not be recovered.

Now a few things to check
- Go through and make sure that no additional Administrator accounts have been created.
- Let us know what template you are using
- What modules are you using, both active and inactive.
- Switch back to the default template and try to do all your normal functions
- Check to make sure the captcha settings under modules are entered correctly
- Have you made any core file changes? If you haven't try re-uploading the core Pligg files again
- What version of Pligg are you using?
- Turn off the SPAM protector and try again, it may be that the SPAM blocker you are using is being a little too restrictive or is not configured correctly.

[bobcallahan]

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I have looked at all they other suggestions and all seem to be correct.