How to protect your Simple Machines (SMF) forum from spam. Automatic detection of the forum engine

SMF Mods are very important to every simple machine forum powered bulletin board as it lets you add features and customizations to your forum without losing them to core forum software updates and/or change of theme.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) being an open source software has got thousands of Modifications (Mods) to meet the need of every discussion board owner or even developers.

Being a long time user of the SMF forum software, I have decided to list out 50 of the very best Simple Machines Forums Modifications (SMF mods) that really matters.

It should be useful to every forum owner. I also made my list so large to be able to serve tech, entertainment, community, gaming or even religious forum administrators that are on the look for best SMF Mods to install.

We separated our list of “ top 50 best SMF mods that matters” in parts, navigate through the list by using the titles below.

Really Important Modifications (Mods)

Seriously, the needs of every forum differs depending on the targeted audience and users, this is my reason for separating this part from the entire list as I wouldn’t recommend as much as 50 SMF mods for a single forum.

This part is limited to mods for core SMF forum owners needs such as:-

• Security.
• Search engine optimization (SEO).
• Preventing spam posts and spam registrations.
• Ads and payment system integration.
• Mobile friendliness and etc.

1. Misc Anti Spam

Combating bots registration in any forum to the webmaster is just as important as keeping the forum itself. A forum left to the mess of robots and spammers will hardly see the light of the day.

Some forums are already sent to oblivion by not implementing a measure to completely prevent spam bots registration. This is my reason for placing this mod at the very top of my list.

Misc Anti Spam smf Mod prevents machines and automated bots from gaining access to your forum. It uses.

2. Anti-Spam Links

After fighting spam bots registration, it is important to , they can be as messy as these bots at times; hence the need to implement an automated police to use the sledgehammer on them.

Anti-Spam Links Mod for SMF gives you control over who post links in your forum space. Having this mod active will turn out to be the best thing to happen to your boards as forum link spamming will be reduced to zero.

In my opinion, it is a must have smf mod for busy forums.

3. Optimus Brave

Now that the bad guys are taken care of, it is time to really face Search Engine Optimization (SEO); a factor that will determine how far your forum will go in the long run.

Optimus Brave Mod for SMF takes care of every options needed to give your forum a good shape in the eyes of google and other tops search engines around.

Opimus brave mod for SMF is one of the most used modification for and works flawlessly for modern-day search engine optimization. It is one of the only few SMF mods with access to sitemap and robots.txt editor.

4.Custom Action

Now that your forum is ready to go viral, you need to create some landing pages such as; privacy policy, forum rules, terms, contact page, custom pages and all that.

Custom Action Mod for SMF makes it pretty easy to create custom HTML, BBC and PHP pages. It is also a great option for those not planning to use any portals mod.

It is light-weighted smf mod that works really well on busy websites and without adding much load to the server.

5. Tapatalk Integration

This is 2014, either you are implementing a responsive design or using apps for those accessing your forum via mobile devices.

Tapatalk Integration Mod for SMF makes it very easy for you to create mobile application for those browsing your forum with phone. There’s app for android, iPhone, blackberry and other top mobile operating system out there.

11. Wireless/RSS amount displayed

The mod makes it very easy for those using SMF default mobile view and/or other similar Wap2 mods to take full control of the number of post shown to their mobile users.

It also gives you full control over the number of RSS feed displayed; with it you can easily change your displayed RSS feed from 5 to something more convenient. [download link]

12. Related Topics

Related Topics Mod for SMF can greatly improve the number of time guests (referred by search) and users spend on your forum by suggesting related topics to them.

It is also great for reducing bounces. The only down side of this mod is being heavy for forums running on a very weak shared server hosting environment. [download link]

13. SA Facebook Integration

Facebook is now used by almost 30% of the entire world population above 13 years. Providing an option to sign up to your forum using Facebook makes it even easier for more people to join.

SA Facebook Mod for SMF do not only make it easy to create a Facebook registration option for your forum but also adds Facebook comments, Facebook likes and other Facebook related features. [download link]

14. Pretty Url

Almost every other CMS out there has an option for this, using SMF doesn’t mean you should piss of your users by forcing them bookmark a topic they would like to visit again.

Pretty Url Mod for SMF makes your url easy for both human and search engines to relate fine with. [download link]

15. Social Media Sharing

We couldn’t handpick the best here as there are two awesome choices to add pretty looking social media sharing buttons to every of your individual forum post.

17. SMF Likes Lite

This is a great mod for modern forum owners, adds an ajax powered like button to your forum post. Great for entertainment forum owners that might just prefer to give a thumb up instead of replying to post.

It is very similar to the official Facebook like button. It also integrates well with SMF by allowing the admin to set necessary permissions. [download link]

Very Useful Mods

Another part of our top 50 SMF Mods that matters will have to do with mods that aren’t extremely needed like the first two parts above but are really essential to the growth and overall development of your forum.

You can as well fix this list up together with the second part of our list ‘cos they are just that important too. It provides some enhancement that can really make your forum to stand out from the rest.

19.Registered Links

Registered Links Mod for SMF encourages guest to join your forum by masking every link on your forum with a “register or sign” warning. [download link]

20. NoFollow All Links

Best for forums that has little or no moderation, automatically adds the rel=”nofollow tag to all links contained within the forum post. Use with caution as could be bad SEO-wise for any regular forum. [download link]

21. SEO and XML Sitemap

If you aren't already comfortable with the SEO backup provided by Optimus Brave Mod, SEO and XML Sitemap Mod for SMF can further improve the performance of your forum in google and other search engines. [download link]

22. SMFShop

Makes the forum a lot more fun by rewarding users with coin money each time they make valuable contribution in the forum. The money can be used to purchase stuff from the forum. [download link]

23. Contact Page

Makes it very easy to add a professional contact form to any SMF powered forum. [download link]

24. SMF Gallery

Adds a beautiful gallery system to smf without tweaking any theme or core files. [download link]

25. Tagging System For Topics

Gives your forum a complete tagging system just like we have in vbulletin, makes it very easy for your users to add individual tags when creating new post on the forum. [download link]

26. Cumulus Congestus

Adds a little extra feature to your forum by creating a tag cloud of popular topics on your forum. [download link]

27.Download System

Great for tech, gaming, music, video and apps forum. It adds a complete download system to your SMF powered forum. [download link]

28. Activity In Profile

Tells you what a user is doing either from the profile page or who is online list. [download link]

Mods for Layout Features and Customization

This part of our list includes awesome modification that will normally add amazing features, look, layout and glimmering touch to the appearance of your forum.

From brilliant colours, awesome CSS styling to Ajax and Facebook related features; we did our best to handpick this part of SMF mods that are great for customizing the layout and overall appearance of your forum.

29. Ultimate Profile

Makes your forum look a bit lively and real by adding social features like you have on Facebook and other top social networking platforms.

Users can receive comments, customize their profile page with HTML & CSS and all that. [download link]

30.Default Avatar

Makes your forum beautiful and consistent in look by adding a default profile image to every of your users. [download link]

31. Smart Pagination

Adds a custom styling to the default SMF pagination with nice CSS tweak. [download link]

32. Vbulletin Style Board Index

Makes your forum index appear a bit different by styling the post / topic area to look similar to that of vbulletin powered discussion boards. [download link]

33. cbi v0.5 (Custom Board Icons)

Helps you customize the default icons on your forum theme. [download link]

35. Add & Create Social Media Icons To Profiles

This Mod makes it easy for all your forum users to add popular Social Media sites to their Profile, it comes with the icons too. [download link]

36. Add Avatar To Who Is Online

Best for entertainment forums that believes so much in pictures. Shows you the pictures of users online when viewing the “who is online” list. [download link]

37. Simple Colorizer

Helps you add color to all usernames with color of membergroup on the forum. [download link]

38. Customize ‘Child board’

Tired of seeing “Child Board” on your sub-boards? Use this mod to rename that part to what pleases your eyes. We considered the usefulness and popularity of this tool before including it in this ultimate list of best 50 SMF mods.

42. Hide Images from Guests

Reduces bandwidth as well as encourages guests to join the forum by hiding images from them till they either register or log in to the forum. [download link]

43. Google Tagging

Strengthens the keyword of your forum by logging incoming google searches and listing them as tags. [download link]

44. Invitation Message In Your Face

Encourages guest to register on your forum by reminding them they aren’t members yet. [download link]

45. Reason For Editing Mod

Adds a reason for editing a post that will be inputted when you edit a post. [download link]

46. ​​PM Auto Responder

This important mod allows users to automatically send an Auto Response that will be sent to sender. Moderators can also use it to automatically warn users to stop asking for help privately. [download link]

47. Fake Topic Views

Can’t tell why most entertainment forum owners love this mod; maybe it actually makes their forum look popular by faking the number of views upward. [download link]

48. Advance Fake Users and Guests Online for SMF

Indirectly increases the number of new registrations on forum, simply making it look busy through increasing numbers of Guests, Hidden Members as well Fake Registered Members. [download link]

49. reCAPTCHA for SMF

Used to be a great option for fighting spam bots registration in the past but has lost much of its potency over the years. Still yet, it is one of the better SMF mods for combating spam and bots registration on simple machine forums.

50. bXk WapMod

Another awesome option for making a better Mobile View or Wap2 Forum. It perfectly complements our SMF mods list as it tends to bring a better option to those that prefers a stand-alone mobile site to responsive designs.

How to Install SMF Mods

Installing smf mods is as easy as installing the SMF software itself. All you need do is walk through the following steps carefully or watch the video attached below for a more visual approach to installing smf mods.

1. Download the SMF mod you wish to install: You can download it directly from the SMF mods site by saving the zip archive mod package to a known folder on your computer’s active desktop.
2. Log in to your SMF forum’s dashboard using the admin details.
3. Click on the admin button from the navigation tabs.
4. Locate and click on the link named Main from the left side of the window and select Packages .
5. Pick the download packages option and scroll down to where you have browse and the other options.
6. Click on browse next to package to upload and find the smf mods zip package already downloaded in the step1 above.
7. Click on apply mod and use the install now button to complete the smf mods installation.

Over to you

I have taken my time to list out the top 50 SMF Mods that rocks, I have been doing a lot with SMF recently and can assure you that the mods (the first part mostly) will be very valuable to your forum.

Do not forget to share and also feel free to drop your questions, difficulty with SMF modifications and other tips that could help with understanding and working with SMF mods.

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We present to your attention a new course from the team The Codeby- "Penetration testing of Web Applications from scratch." General theory, preparation of the working environment, passive fuzzing and fingerprinting, Active fuzzing, Vulnerabilities, Post-exploitation, Tools, Social Engeneering and much more.

In case anyone doesn't know, Simple Machines Forum - SMF for short - is, as stated on the official website, a free, professional-grade package that will allow you to organize your own online community in a few minutes. on this engine, you can look here. I myself set up my own forum on it (by the way, go to FreeForum.biz).

It doesn't matter how much or little spam appears on your forum. The important thing is that you spend your valuable time on moderation. Setting up a plugin that will do all the work for you takes a few minutes, and it will save you, in total, days and months, which will add up to those minutes that you would spend on erasing messages and deleting users.

I will note that I tried to fight spammers on my own - I blocked access via IP and even subnets. It really worked, it filtered out a lot of garbage, but nevertheless, once every one or two days someone made it through. And it took quite a lot of time to replenish the database of banned IPs. I thought there must be a better way, and indeed there was!

1. Installation and configuration of Stop Spammer

In two weeks of operation, this plugin blocked 2202 fake users. Each of them would leave at least one message. The spammers show no signs of slowing down and I would spend time cleaning up my forum every day.

Instead, every few days I go to the user management page and see something like this:

I move on to the “Awaiting approval” section (these are the spammers found who are deprived of the opportunity to leave messages until their accounts are approved by the administrator). I check the “Select all” checkbox and delete them with one click:

That's it, all spam accounts go into oblivion. Let's return to our list of users:

It can be seen that the list has thinned out noticeably, but who are the rest? We select everyone and send them for verification with one button:

One “red” one appears, we immediately delete it. If you have free time, you can do others. If you don’t have time, then don’t do anything with new users - most of them will “blush” during subsequent checks. If you have time, you can go to their profiles and look - if there is a link in the signature, they will immediately be banned, these are fake accounts of spammers who will never leave a single useful message.

I told you how to use this magical plugin, now I will tell you how to install it.

Download two files: language_full.zip (this is the language pack for translating the plugin) and StopSpammer_v2_3_9.zip (the number may be different, as versions are updated). Unpack the contents of the StopSpammer_v2_3_9.zip archive into some folder. Unpack the language_full.zip archive into the same folder and agree to replace the files. Now pack our folder into a zip archive.

In the admin panel, proceed to install packages. Opposite the “Download package” inscription there is a button for selecting a file on your computer. Select our new archive (where we replaced the language file), upload it to the forum and activate the package.

That's it!

Additional configuration of the plugin occurs in the admin panel: go to

Users → Registration → Settings

You can leave the default values ​​there. There is also a field “Your API key”. Without this key, you will not be able to report new spammers (but the plugin will work and filter known spammers). If you want to get your own API key, go to www.stopforumspam.com to register, and then enter the key here. If you have not received the key yet, leave the field blank. Then the default key will be used.

2. Installation and configuration of Anti-Spam Links

Adherents of the SEO religion (you can read more about my attitude towards SEO-nists in another) have a firm conviction that by increasing the number of links to their site, they “promote” it (for some reason the idea of ​​​​creating interesting and high-quality content does not appeal to anyone doesn't come to mind). He would be a sucker, but there would be ways to extract money from him. So, some “citizens” provide services for “running” sites through forums. They create a large number of accounts on different forums and insert backlinks there in signatures and other available fields. Despite the fact that even “SEO experimenters” have already experimentally proven that these links are of zero use, some warn that you can get a ban from search engines for this, Yandex, for example, simply ignores links on ALL forums and sites where anyone can leave links. Google also has similar algorithms - ignoring links in comments, etc. But the law is not written for suckers... Therefore, we, the owners of the forums, have to reckon with the facts that “cool SEO optimizers” order a “run” of their shitty creations for a thousand rubles.

The Stop Spammer plugin will filter out a lot. But we can help him! You can take the very interest of posting links on your forum out from under spammers. This is exactly what Anti-Spam Links are for. This plugin ( specific numbers can be changed in the settings) does this:

• those who, for example, have less than five messages, cannot leave links at all
• those who, for example, have less than 15 messages, cannot leave active links, http:// is removed from links and in general these links become nubolinks (newbielink)
• those with, for example, less than 50 posts can leave active links, but all links are given a nofollow attribute.
• Well, those who have more than 50 posts can insert the most common active links, which transfer the weight of the site to the page being linked to.

Believe me, would-be SEOs are very careful about the form in which their link ends up on the site. They'll quickly lose interest in your forum if they can't easily post their shitty links to their shitty sites there.

Yes, by the way, the above rules also work in fields such as signatures.

To install this plugin, go to its official page. Download the anti_spam_links_v1.0.1.zip archive (the number may be different). Again in the forum admin, go to install packages (as you did with the previous package) and install it. There is no language file for this package, so there is no need to unpack the archive or do anything with it.

To configure the plugin, go to the section

Configuration → Setting up mods… → Setting up modifications

If you wish, specify how many messages the user must have to upgrade his capabilities.

Conclusion

These two plugins will make your life, the forum owner, VERY much easier and will save a lot of time. However, from time to time spammers break through and, at least once a week, you need to “thin out” users and delete spam messages. Therefore, do not abandon your web resources!

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Tours and holidays in Australia

Internet forums are one of the most popular types of Internet resources. This is understandable, since forums are an ideal platform for free communication between visitors. A forum is a great way to organize a community on your site and build a regular audience of visitors.

There are many forum engines. I have long wanted to review forum engines. I will not compare them with each other - this is the topic of a separate article.

When choosing a forum engine, I advise you to determine the following points for yourself:

1. What forum functionality do you need? Most forum engines have extensive capabilities, but some nuances are not implemented in all forum CMSs. I recommend visiting the official websites of the engines and reading detailed descriptions of the functionality.

2. Paid or free engine - this point also needs to be taken into account. There are only two paid engines in this review - vBulletin and IPB, the rest are free.

3. Community development - when an engine has a developed community both on the English-speaking and Russian-speaking Internet, this is a big plus. The development of the community is directly related to the number of different modifications, improvements and design templates. If the engine has a small community, then you need to keep in mind that many issues will have to be resolved on your own.

4. Date of the last update of the engine - if the engine has not been updated for a long time, this indicates that the developers are not developing it or have abandoned further development. This is a big disadvantage. Internet technologies are constantly evolving, and a forum with outdated functionality will limit the possibilities for its further development.

Okay, enough big words :) I'll start with the most popular forum engines, based on this CMS rating.

This is my favorite forum engine, and I run my Planet Photoshop forum on this engine. The reason is not only that it is a free forum engine, but also that it has wide functionality, has developed communities both on the English-speaking Internet and on the RuNet, therefore many mods have been developed for phpBB for every taste, with the help of which you can expand the functionality even further.

Logs of actions of the user, moderator, administrator, precise settings of access rights of the moderator and administrator, identification of search robots, creation of user groups, polls, attachments in messages and personal messages - these are just part of the functionality of phpBB.

I also really like the direction in which phpBB is developing from version to version. phpBB is convenient for both administrators, moderators and ordinary users.

My opinion after several years of using phpBB is that it is a wonderful forum engine that does not require hosting resources and provides all the necessary potential for running a forum.

Useful resources on phpBB:

Invision Power Board is a paid forum engine that is very popular on the Internet. You can find out the cost in RuNet. Many famous forums operate on it. It has developed communities on the English- and Russian-language Internet.

There are additional official applications for IPB (gallery, blog, file archive module). Besides this, there is visual editor messages, a text version of the forum optimized for search robots, a tool for convenient backup of the forum database, a detailed log of the actions of administrators and moderators, as well as a log of search robot actions.

Useful sites for Invision Power Board:

I invite you to subscribe to my channels on Telegram:

vBulletin is a wonderful forum engine. It is paid, the cost can be found out. Along with IPB, vBulletin is the leader among paid engines.

Podcasting support, automatic generation of forum RSS feeds, the ability for visitors to create social groups and interest clubs on the forum, user photo galleries, tags are supported, the ability to add forum topics to social bookmarks by the users themselves - these are the most interesting features of vBulletin, in my opinion.

punBB is a very light and simple forum. The forum control panel is convenient and intuitive. punBB has fewer features, but this is compensated by its speed and low requirements for hosting resources.

The developers of punBB focus on lightness, speed and compactness.

Useful resources on punBB:

YaBB is a free forum engine written in Perl. Unlike most other forum engines, YaBB uses files rather than a database to store data.

A convenient text editor for writing messages, ample opportunities for administrators and moderators, the ability to change settings and templates on the fly, the ability to convert a page into a “printable version” - these are not all the capabilities of the YaBB forum engine.

Now a small digression. If you are interested in learning about those promotion methods that give a good effect for increasing target traffic, then I can offer my paid research SEO intelligence http://seorazvedka.ru/, in which I showed, using the example of 10 profitable young sites from different topics, how they are promoted and described how this can be used to promote their resources.

SMF is another fast and lightweight forum engine. It is undemanding to server resources and is actively gaining popularity.

OpenID support, a user warning system, the ability to pre-moderate topics, messages and attachments if necessary, a WYSIWYG editor for messages - and that’s not all that SMF allows!

Intellect Board is the original free engine. The idea behind the Intellect Board developers is to create a website based on a forum. The functionality of Intellect Board is very wide - a collection of articles, presentation, news, archive of files, photo gallery, IRC chat, encyclopedia. Essentially, the Intellect Board is full-fledged system site management.

The main features of the Intellect Board - The ability to set rules for all sections, support for graphic libraries GD and GD2 for creating small copies of pictures and photographs, the ability to issue warnings and rewards by moderators and administrators (and warnings can be both indefinite and time-limited), rating topics, articles, files and photos/

ExBB (Exclusive Bulletin Board))

ExBB is a lightweight and free forum engine. It, like YaBB, does not require a database and stores information in text files.

ExBB has the following advantages: pages are generated very quickly, the load on the server is minimal, a high degree of resistance to hacking, the forum runs on files, no databases are required, for it to work it is enough that the hosting has PHP support.

Vanilla is an original forum engine that is interesting for its modularity. A big plus of this forum CMS is that most modules can be installed in one click

Advantages of Vanilla: its own framework that allows you to write extensions, the ability to build communities (voting, tag clouds, blogs, chat, karma-like add-ons, etc.), ease of installing add-ons (in most cases, upload it, press one button - and that’s it!), extensibility of standard functionality (modularity) due to add-ons, of which about 450 have now been written.

Another interesting feature of the Vanilla forum engine is the “Whisper” system - you can simply send a message to someone in a whisper without leaving the topic page, or create a “whisper” topic, which will be a visual history of correspondence.

Let's start right away with the code of the main script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

# which-forum.pl script
# (c) Two thousand 10 Alexandr A Alexeev, http://eax.me/

# commented lines - for rigor
# if the task is to collect engine statistics, leave it as is
# if you make a list of forums, uncomment

My$data;
$data .= $_while(<>);

# check how much was Powered by phpBB without a link in the footer

Automatic installation of the module points system 1.6