i did a search for this but got zero useful answers/results.
I'm a moderator at a pretty big (15,000+) phpbb forum. The admin is a lazy clown and maybe even braindead. Over the last coupla years, things have gone down the toilet re user registration. I keep seeing newly reg'd users with famous movie, cartoon and pop star names when I log in. the forum deals with serious subjects, but it's becoming a joke now.
So i see big trouble ahead. I want to set up another phpbb forum as a safety net on a personal site that has a few e-commerce pages. But i want to force genuine registrations by requiring a fee of $5 paid using a credit card or PayPal. this way I figure it will get no Tom Cruises, Homer Simpsons, or Ringo Starrs.
Is this possible? If yes, how can i do it?
my site was built using Rapidweaver on a mac, and I already have the cart stuff.
It is possible, but if stopping spam bots, rather than monetization, is your true goal, there are far easier ways to do that. And most people will not pay to register at a board, mainly because that has not been the historical paradigm. See this for SOME techniques (there are others).
it's just 10% keeping out spammers, but 90% to force people to use real names. you can't have a credit card in the name Ringo Starr unless you're really Ringo Starr. plus hosting, traffic, and renewals cost bucks, so the reg charge of $5 would be a big help. i ain't bill gates yet
but big thanx for the info on spamscum.
got any low-down on credit card registrations? help a po'boy out?
Personally, i won't give any board my credit card data just to register myself. I don't know what the board's owner will do or or a possible attacker can do with the data.
If a web site needs my real identity for any legal reason (I don't talk about facebook and others, which have those rules, but in my opinion no legal reason) there are, depending on the country you life, identification services you can use.
And no, I don't know about any extension using such a service.
There is the US-Law based COPPA registration process already builtin, but that is afaik only for registration of under13-year old people in the US ...
Rasher310 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 22, 2017 4:22 pm
but 90% to force people to use real names. you can't have a credit card in the name Ringo Starr unless you're really Ringo Starr.
It seems mainly because of identity confirmation ...
I have never been requested to pay to join a forum and I never will. I resent even having to register to read content so I just go and find another forum with similar content, and that is what I would expect most of your potential members will do.
David Remember: You only know what you know and - you don't know what you don't know!
I now no longer support any of my extensions but they will start to become available here
i'm grateful to you good folk for giving me your time.
yeah you're probably right that most folk won't use a credit card to join a forum. i shoulda given more details in my first post to explain why i wanted to do this
basically the dying site sells very low-cost files ($5) and understandable user guides for a pretty good home electronics system with a really crappy manual. i developed and wrote most all of these and my name is on them. people are cool with paying for them with a credit card or PayPal cos they're worth 10 times that. 40% of each sale goes to the admin, 20% goes to hosting (so he tells me), and I get the other 40%. the forum is for user support. i'm doing most of it but the place is still going down the tubes cos 2 of the mods are his dumb brothers who don't do any real work cos they don't understand the system, and the other 6 are his drinking buddies and only three of them have a clue
yeah. been played for a starry-eyed sucker big time i know
when i refit my own e-commerce site to sell these files and docs as well, plus all the new ones i made, then pull out of the original site, this moron is gonna finally wake up and come after me.
so i'm gonna have these 9 yo-yos and all their buddies signing up, making my life hell, and i'm pretty sure they'll post porn to drive away the decent folk. i figured i could handle all the mod/admin work by myself if i could force real name forum registration. but from what you guys are telling me, this ain't gonna fly.
my gf's brother was telling me about some rapper's forum he's in that has hidden subs with downloads you can only see if you ante up with a credit card/paypal sub. dunno how you'd do that.
well this is a rattlesnake i gotta poke so i'll maybe try putting a note on the reg page saying real names only, then force new reg'd users to make 5, maybe 10 posts before letting them up the ladder. that way i can mod them before they do any damage. i know most folk will fake the name thing but i'll just have to go without proper sleep for a month after i pull out of the original site. these goons ain't gonna be too happy about losing their sugar daddy if you follow me
don't see the big deal about real names anyway. your bank knows it, your postman knows it, the IRS knows it, your utilities know it, your library knows it, your gf's homies know it. if everybody had to use a real name, what's the beef then? i don't get it. i'm in a few other forums and i used my real name cos I figure I ain't ever gonna forget it. and who cares anyway? i used a handle here myself because the admin goon's a member here and i don't want him seeing what i'm doing until i tell him i'm history. but he ain't a big reader anyways. video games are his thing.
"The good news is hell is just the product of a morbid human imagination.
The bad news is, whatever humans can imagine, they can usually create." - Harmony Cobel