Good news, Bad news

The good news is, PhonoLand.Com has "survived" the forum upgrade! . Although I wished for more postings/day, it appears the traffic on the website is almost the same as it was. We should keep in mind that traffic in july/august is usually also less busy because of holidays.

Once I have more time (and it's not around 36 degrees celcius here anymore I will start a new round of promoting this website on the web... (i hope in august)... so hopefully the forum will then be visited even more! Google also picked up the forum in it's index... even the topics! Hopefully that helps too.

The bad news... more and more spam on the forum . I am removing spam -every- day and the spam only increases. I have added a MOD to the forum to avoid anonymous spamming, but within a few days spammers apparently found a workaround. There should be a law against people who spam. I mean: Spammers destroy the pleasure and useability of this forum. The only thing at this moment I can do is remove the spam, but the next day it's back.

So, I am now thinking of allowing only registered people to post in the forum again. I believe most "regular" posters from the old forum have now registered, but before I take this step I really want to know what you think.

For that reason, this topic with a poll. Let me know what you think by placing your comments here... suggestions are also welcome!!!!!

In the mean time, we have found ways to ridicule the spam, like suggesting that you put the pills in the jukebox coin slot to cure the ailing electronics.

I noticed!!! lol!

That's a good way to deal with that rubbish. I don't believe however author's of spam postings will ever see replies... it's all done by bots, probably fully automated. Never the less, this way other visitors also know it's rubbish...

I always think of Monty Python whin I hear spam- When I see it, thats another thing. I believe 99% of us spend money to avoid having it on our computors, so to come to a site and have it invite itself in is irritating.
I understand the guest thing- maybe they could have a day pass of some nature that is easy to use, but the spam cannot??? Dave (collector of all things vinyl)

The idea of a day pass is good, but it won't work. Spambots enter and leave in about 1 or 2 minutes (guess). I assume they come back under a different address, so it is almost impossible to make something like a day pass because there is nothing to "attach" it to (like a static address).

Although not many ppl have voted... I think I will lock the forum for anonymous postings next week since most ppl so far agree.

BTW, locking it for anonymous won't have a 100% effect. On another website I am currently building (http://www.mpsmits.com/) I also have phpBB running where there are "spam registrations". Bots register names automatically just so they can mention their homepage in the profile. I assume this is done because search engines like google tend to give sites which are linked from many other sites a higher rank...

But... it's a matter of trying I guess. There are now 2 moderators active on PhonoLand.Com so that should help aswell.