Author Topic: Forum subdomain needs a favicon.ico file and robots.txt file  (Read 8011 times)

Jim

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Hey, Steve, I humbly suggest that you plop that Escape Pod favicon.ico file into the root of this new subdomain, and that you also put in a robots.txt exclusion file.

Hide these forums from the search engines (just the forums, not your sites themselves) and you won't have spammers showing up here trying to ruin it.

Remember, Steve, forum spamming is not something people do for a hobby... it's a cottage industry at this point, and there are programmers who actively sell forum-spamming software.

It's only a matter of time before updates to those noxious programs include the functionality to spam a Simple Machines forum.

Right now is the perfect moment to hide the forums and insure that they remain spam-free for good long time.

My imaginary omnipotent friend is more real that your imaginary omnipotent friend.


Michael

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Reply #1 on: January 04, 2007, 04:54:03 PM
True, but if you hide the forum from search engines, you have hid the forum from search engines.   :o
By that I mean you throw the baby out with the bathwater--spammers can't find you, but neither can anyone else.

I think he has a really good Catcha system, and same again for first post--most bots will never be able to post that first message unless they are human assisted to do so.  This is pretty tight.



Ryuujin

  • Guest
Reply #2 on: January 04, 2007, 05:29:31 PM
It's still possible to link to the forum from the site and mention it in the podcasts. That way listeners (and interested people from search engines) will know where to find it, but spammers might find it a bit harder.

Also, I REALLY dislike when forums show up in search engines all the time instead of useful information.



SimplyScripts

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Reply #3 on: January 07, 2007, 11:10:09 PM
One way to limit the spammer problem with the forum, yet still have it sucked up by search engines is to set up the registration process such that a user has to confirm membership rather than automatically bestowing it upon them on sign up.  Needless to say, don't allow guest posting.  I've had a lot of success with keeping both spammers and trolls at bay, yet still allow the boards to show up in Google, etc.

Don