Buddypress Humanity
Posted on Sunday, July 25th - 2010
This plugin adds a customizable security question to the sign up form. You can choose your own question and answers. Multiple answers are possible, you can have a question like: Do you like cats or dogs and have both as acceptable answers. The goal is to fool the spam bots. Change questions as often as you need, it's easy.
This plugin can't stop spam altogether, but using this in conjunction with other anti-spam technologies will certainly cut down on spam blog registrations.
Plugin Groups
Contribute to plugin development or simply participate by joining the group.
Instructions:
- Install the plugin
- Click on the BP Humanity link, located in the Buddypress sidebar menu
- Choose a title for your question. (EX: Security Question, or Humanity Check)
- Choose a question to ask. Change this as often as you like.
- Type in a comma separated list of answers to the question, capitalization is irrelevant.
Here is the Buddypress registration form:
Here is the admin page:
Example Questions:
Feel free to use copy and paste these to use as questions
| No: | Question: | Answers: |
| 1 | What is you favorite color of the rainbow? | red,orange,yellow,green,blue,indigo,violet |
| 2 | Who is the president of the United States? | Barack Obama |
| 3 | How many moons orbit Earth? | 1 |
| 4 | Which is larger, a turtle or a whale? | whale |
| 5 | What color is grass? | green |
20 Responses to “Buddypress Humanity”
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I have install this plugin and I also put a question and a answer in the Admin-Config, but there is no question on my Reg-Website, have I activate this plugin or have I add something to the php-code of my Website... ?!? can you please help, thx.
You should not need to do anything extra to display the question. Version 1.0 of the plugin was only meant to work for Buddypress/WPMU. For Version 1.1, I added support for Buddypress that is installed on a regular WordPress (single) install.
If you upgrade to 1.1 and still have issues just send me some more information and I will see what I can do.
This plugin is only for buddypress, so just want to make sure you are using it in conjuction with BP.
this failed, getting bots registered
Alex, stopping the bots is very difficult and this is only another stop gap in an anti-spam campaign.
If you really want to stop spam blogs try this:
Set up buddypress humanity with a question like this: Enter your site keycode to join, and put a link to a contact form or key application that states, "please provide a brief description of the blog you want to create". Then set the answer to something like: 34DH68TH56RFG657UH
You can then review the key applications and it is really easy to see if the applicant is a spamer or not based on the response. Most of the time the bot will reply with "create a blog", or "about shoes" - obviously spam. If you are happy with the response them email them the key. Make sure to change the key periodically.
If a real person responds with a more human blog description then email them the key.
I would personally suggest bp-registration-options over Adam's method as this plugin allows you to moderate new member signups and does not give them access to the social areas of the site where they can post spam comments. Simply do not approve them and they're unable to post.
Then just use BP Humanity to cut down on the amount that even try to register so your queue of users to approve doesn't fill up with junk!
To follow up, I do see where Adam's approach can be a good one and after re-reading it again, I see it's basically the same as this plugin. I just feel this moves it all to the admin interface so you're not being emailed all the time by spam bots. It's just a little more passive in nature in that you can decide when to approve members or not and not be bothered with lots of junk emails.
I did not mean to criticize you on that Adam and I do feel this plugin is a great step and help in the anti-spam fight :) I am especially impressed how well it integrates into the BP signup as it's certainly the best at that.
Thanks!
Andrew
Thanks for the input, I have found that rotating your security question helps too, I think the spammers figure out the answer to the question after a week or two.
The bulletproof method I have adopted is to set up a key for the question and have the potential blogger fill out a key request form. I ask them to describe what they are going to blog about. It is really easy to tell if a real person filled out the form and if so I just email them the key.
So with the new wordpress update, I am not able to see the menu for buddypress humanity under the buddypress section in wp-admin. I have wordpress MU enabled and I also have Buddypress humanity enabled on the network, and I can't see it. I have tried to enable Buddypress humanity on just my individual site but that does not work as well, does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks Jon, you are right, it looks like buddypress 1.2.8 changed some stuff around. They may have changed the name of their menu page, I will need to check this out. I will try to fix my plugins later today.
Appreciate it.
Hey No problem thanks for this awesome plugin! Out of all my anti-spam plugins yours was the only one I was able to use to stop spammers! It is a powerful yet simple plugin! One thing that would be cool to add is if you could add the ability to add multiple questions!
Thanks again for the plugin,
Jon
Hey Adam, I was wondering if you have released an updated version of the plugin yet?
Let me know if you have.
Thanks,
Jonathan
I updated on of my basic plugins over the weekend in an effort to figure out how to deal with wp 3.1 and mu. I have a workaround and will implement that into buddypress humanity over the next couple days. Thanks, workin on it
First of all, thanks for the great plugin - its been helping ALOT since we installed a while back. I've just noticed, however, that the question is only showing up on the main site in my network, but none of the subdomains. The answer text box is there, and it is required for submitting registration, but the question does not appear...effectively making it impossible to register on those sites.
You can see it here:
http://gbiportal.net/register
But as you can see, it doesn't show up here:
http://connectivity.gbiportal.net/register
I suspect it has to do with upgrading to 3.0, but we are just now seeing the problem. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Laurie
I am going to look into this over the weekend, the issue has been reported by a few people. Thanks for the update.
Any luck on finding a fix to the disappearing question?
I took another look at the plugin and it still seems to be working properly. I never meant for the plugin to be used on child sites just with the default behavior where you register for those sites from the main site. The /register page should be on the main domain and where you are redirected from child sites
Next Version, Please multiple Q&A !
Example
Setting
Question Line1 -->Anser Line1
Question Line2 -->Anser Line2
Question Line3 -->Anser Line3
Question Line4 -->Anser Line4
Question Line5 -->Anser Line5
Does this work okay for BuddyPress?
Oops, I meant BuddyPress v1.5 :)
I have not tested this with 1.5 - trying to get around to it, I have about 4 BP plugins to update - so not sure