Adding CAPTCHA verification to Pligg

**Permanent4** · 01-17-2006, 01:53 PM

Greetings, Pliggers!

I'm planning on starting up my own Pligg site in the near future, but I have a major concern that I think needs addressing -- bots. I'm dreading the possibility that bots will find my Pligg site and smother it in spam and garbage, thus sucking up my bandwidth and scaring actual users away. (I get regular comment spam on one of my blogs, and one particular spammer has taken a liking to my Liberated Syndication account.)

So I'm wondering if you guys have any plans to add a CAPTCHA verification package of some kind to Pligg, so that no story can be submitted unless someone types in the appropriate random letter string. I would incorporate such a string myself, except that I can barely understand PHP, and I have this feeling that as soon as I figure out how to incorporate CAPTCHA into the code, a new beta will come out that will require me to relearn that whole process, and this loop repeats into infinity...

I've found this freeware PHP CAPTCHA class online, and I'm sure there are others out there. So perhaps you guys could consider incorporating something like this into your code? It would take a load off my mind. Thanks.

-David

**Yankidank** · 01-17-2006, 03:46 PM

Pligg already uses a CAPTCHA for registering new users, which in a way would prevent a lot of spam since anonymous users can't post articles. We could use the existing code from the registration for verifying each individual story if necissary, but I'd like to hear what everyone thinks about this first.

**KingPin** · 01-17-2006, 03:51 PM

nah as long as anonymous users arent allowed no need to verify each story, its just going to be a hassale. atleast a toggle option if you do include it.

**j91** · 01-17-2006, 04:33 PM

I support the CAPTCHA opting in posts, it'll prevent spam from users.

**George** · 01-17-2006, 06:00 PM

Include it only if there is an option to turn it on or off.

**AshDigg** · 01-17-2006, 06:08 PM

W3C says CAPTCHA is not a good solution (not that I agree with them). http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/NOTE-turingtest-20051123/

The recommend biometrics, so I need everyone to press thier face against thier monitors so I can scan your retinas.

Thank you for your cooperation.

I will need Yankidank to stop gouging peoples eyes out (look at his avatar).

**George** · 01-17-2006, 06:21 PM

lol...thats funny. so no CAPTCHA?

**Permanent4** · 01-17-2006, 07:29 PM

I like the idea of having it as an option that an admin could turn on and off, so long as that doesn't add too much extra work on y'all's part. A "real user" could still sign up and create a bot that utilizes his username to spam the site. I'm open for other ideas about keeping potential spammers out of Pligg sites as well.

-David

**SpyMy** · 01-17-2006, 07:41 PM

Just put a limit, 1 new submission every 5 minutes or something.

Or if second submission is within 2 minutes, use captcha.

Don't really need it for legimate submissions, but we can invent some metric that will utilise captcha when something fishy happens.

**AshDigg** · 01-17-2006, 08:15 PM

It wouldn't be difficult to make a user do a captcha for each story submit / comment. It's already done for the registration process.

I was thinking about implementing something along the lines of a Bayesian Filter for PHP....

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:...ient=firefox-a

It's for wordpress, but could be easily converted for Pligg.