[2.0.21] User Shield

[Extensions Robot]

MOD Name: User Shield
Author: Wo1f
MOD Description: Hides usernames and corresponding profile data from all except the Administrator until activated. Manage (activate or delete) non-activated members from the memberlist.


MOD Version: 1.2.1

Download File: user_shield_v1_2_1a.zip
mods overview page: View
File Size: 19909 Bytes

Support for this MOD needs to be asked within this topic. The phpBB Teams are not responsible or required to give anyone support for this MOD. By installing this MOD, the phpBB Support Team or phpBB MODifications Team may not be able to provide support.

This MOD has only been tested by the phpBB MOD Team with the phpBB version in the topic title. It may not work in any other versions of phpBB.

[webmacster87]

MOD Validated/Released

Notes:
Users cannot see the profile data, etc. of inactive users while they are inactive.

[Wo1f]

Greetings all!

As the battle between spam-bot smarts and countermeasures ( Fight the spam registration bots! :: Anti-Spam Thread! :: Preventing SPAM - Bots and Humans ) rages on, success is only assured with a layered security approach and unfortunately, until the next spam-bot upgrade. Building on the proven track record of defender-uk's excellent "Active members Only" mod, User Shield is your last line of defence when countermeasures have been bypassed, integrating enhancements along with a simple management filtered list for non-activated members.

• Benefits
  
  User Shield is first and foremost a spam deterrent mod with the specific purpose of making your board useless in helping spammers improve their popular search engine rankings. It does this by hiding username and profil data from all, except the administrator, until they are activated (in the case of legitimate new members) or deleted (in the case of despised spam-bots). It also shields your regular members and moderators from potentially offensive material (username, location, signatures and website) and does it seamlessly.
  
  When countermeasures are behind the curve so to speak, administrators may have to deal with a larger number of non-activated registration entries. User Shield offers a quick and efficient management list for such cases, enabling bulk deletion for a proper and satisfying disposal of spam-bot filth or bulk activation (for a fast growing and spam free community ).
  
  
  Features
• Ability to turn ON or OFF all features of this mod through the ACP
• Hides username references and profile data until activated - from guests, registered users and moderators
• Ability to fetch and display from the Index or Memberlist a filtered list of "non-activated" registered users - for admins only
• Ability to manage (activate or delete in bulk based on selected users) "non-activated" registered users through this filtered list - for admins only
  
  
  Version compatibility
• User Shield v1.2.1a is compatible with the newly released phpBB v2.0.22 and no changes are required. The installation was done manually and then with EasyMOD on 2 distinct test boards with no issues whatsoever.
  
  
  Installation
  
  Installation with EasyMOD is strongly recommended on new or unmoded boards.
  
  Addition: For more information on how to install User Shield either manually or with EasyMOD, refer to this post:
  
  
  • How do I install User Shield?
  [/url]

Very important

It is important to realize that it is not within the scope of User Shield's role to delete activated spam accounts that may have created activity on your board, but rather delete spam accounts that have never been activated.

Why?

When an account is created, only 3 tables are affected - which User Shield can delete thoroughly. In the case of "activated" spam accounts or any accounts that have been reverted back to a non-active state, many more tables would need to be cleaned properly.

Also, once User Shield is installed, make sure that the following is set accordingly in your ACP for maximum efficiency:

1. User Activation --> Set to Admin or User
2. Visual confirmation --> Set to ON
3. Guest posting --> For every forum should be disallowed

Suggestions and feedback are always very welcomed.

Best regards,
Wolf


Note: My thanks go out to Fountain of Apples and the MOD team for all their hard work.

Edit #1 - Modified recommended default options to include "User" for account activation.
Edit #2 - Demo board is offline for an inderterminate period of time. Added additional links to spam related topics.
Edit #3 - Added a link to the "Installation" section on how to install User Shield.
Edit #4 - Added the "Version compatibility" section above.
Edit #5 - Support for this MOD cannot be provided by author anymore. Good luck to all! June 2nd, 2007

[MarkTheDaemon]

Great MOD Wo1f, and congratulations on getting it validated


Mark

[Wo1f]

Nice to hear from you Mark and thanks for the good words!

Best regards,
Wolf

[EXreaction]

Looks very nice...I made a mini one like this to go with my anti-spam acp, but it isn't nearly as in depth as this one is.

Keep up the good work.

[Wo1f]

Thanks EXreaction! And good luck to you also in your endeavors to help board owners fight spam. The more, the "betterer".


Best regards,
Wolf

[MarkTheDaemon]

Nice to hear from you Mark and thanks for the good words!

Yeah, you too Wolf, hope life is treating you well

Installed perfectly, no issues whatsoever

Mark

[Wo1f]

Installed perfectly, no issues whatsoever

Missed that comment earlier...

Now that's what I want to hear! If and when you have a chance Mark, let me know how practical it is for you, as I know you already have some pretty "mean and efficient" defences for spam. Have any managed to get through? And if so, did User Shield meet your expectations in protecting your users? Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Let me know,
Wolf

[MarkTheDaemon]

Installed perfectly, no issues whatsoever

Missed that comment earlier...

Now that's what I want to hear! If and when you have a chance Mark, let me know how practical it is for you, as I know you already have some pretty "mean and efficient" defences for spam. Have any managed to get through? And if so, did User Shield meet your expectations in protecting your users? Any feedback on this would be appreciated.

Let me know,
Wolf

Indeed i have some "efficent" ways of spam prevention . User Shield is great, working in conjunction with a improved CAPTCHA etc. it works perfectly for my setup.

I co-admin some fairly large boards and spam is a big issue, the User Shield is a great way to protect my users from the depths of online spam, even if they do get through the CAPTCHA etc. and the bots are getting cleverer.

Overall User Shield is a great MOD and i recommend it for any forum, even if you haven't got a major problem with spam users


Mark

[stevemac]

Download link appears not to be working - I keep downloading an empty .zip file.


Disregard above statement - working okay now

[editingfx]

Install help - first off, I installed EasyMod as recommended, but when I tried to use it to install UserShield v1_2_1a, EasyMod didn't detect UserShield as being in the mods folder. I ran the .txt file through EasyMod's validation procedure & it failed.
SO... I then tried to manually installed UserShield; uploaded contrib & install folders, ran update_config_v1_2_1.php, got an installed confirmation from UseShield, and then deleted uploaded folders. But I don't see any mod to the admin controls. What'd I do wrong? (PS - I did not upload these 2 files: install_user_shield_v1_2_1.xml and modx.subsilver.en.xsl)

[Wo1f]

Hi editingfx,

EasyMod didn't detect UserShield as being in the mods folder.

Assuming you have installed EasyMOD correctly, their could still be a few explanations to this one. Here are a few examples showing the correct approach to make sure EM detects a MOD to be installed:

1. your_forum_root/admin/mods/contrib/install_user_shield_v1_2_1.txt
2. your_forum_root/admin/mods/newly_created_folder_for_UserShield/install_user_shield_v1_2_1.txt

... EasyMOD will detect these without issues. More information on this here:

• Installing MODs with EasyMOD

[/url]

I ran the .txt file through EasyMod's validation procedure & it failed.

By "validation procedure", you mean that it could not find certain specific lines of code? If that's the case, that simply means that you have other installed mods that have modified the default phpBB code in such a way that the original line of code to be modified cannot be found by EasyMOD. You have no choice in that case but to do the edits in question manually, after instructing EasyMOD to skip the problematic edit.

SO... I then tried to manually installed UserShield; uploaded contrib & install folders, ran update_config_v1_2_1.php, got an installed confirmation from UseShield, and then deleted uploaded folders. But I don't see any mod to the admin controls. What'd I do wrong?

I'm not sure at this point if you did anything wrong, but the option to turn ON or OFF all features of this MOD is found here:

ACP --> "General Admin" --> "Configuration" --> "User and Forum Basic Settings".

It's the last item in this section. If this does not answer your question (I'm unsure), just let me know.

(PS - I did not upload these 2 files: install_user_shield_v1_2_1.xml and modx.subsilver.en.xsl)

MODx files are an alternate way of installing MODs (versus using a *.txt or *.mod file as you have done). More information on this here:

• MODx - FAQ

[/url]

Let me know if this is helpful,
Wolf

[editingfx]

I checked in ACP/../User & Forum Settings, and saw nothing that looked like a UserShield setting. (Of course, I didn't see what that setting would be in any posts.) So assuming my manual install didn't work I tried EasyMod again:

My prior detection issue was not placing all the mod files in a single folder. Did that and EasyMod detected UserShield. Processed it via EasyMod, and got the following error:

****************
SQL ERROR

SQL PROCESSING HALTED

An error was encountered while processing the SQL commands. Further SQL processing has been halted. You may choose to complete the MOD installation anyway and perform the SQL commands manually yourself. However, at this point EM cannot guarantee the MOD will work correctly so you are best off seeking support from the Author before continuing further.

The failed line was:

INSERT INTO phpbb_config(config_name,config_value) VALUES('username_hide_inac','1');;


SQL ERROR: 1062
Duplicate entry 'username_hide_inac' for key 1


The following SQL was attempted: Allow


INSERT INTO phpbb_config(config_name,config_value) VALUES('username_hide_inac','1');;

FAILED
****************

I did not check the "Complete Installation" button in EasyMod. So what now? (lol... so much for "easy" mod)

[PS - in my earlier post by "validation", I mean I ran the your .txt file through EasyMod's validation webpage, and it gave an error.

Thanks for the help Wolf, I apologize for my noob status.

[Wo1f]

****************
SQL ERROR

SQL PROCESSING HALTED

An error was encountered ...
The failed line was:

INSERT INTO phpbb_config(config_name,config_value) VALUES('username_hide_inac','1');;
...

FAILED
****************

All this is telling you, is that you already have created the values to populate the database previously (by running this file --> update_config_v1_2_1.php). There was no need to run that part of it again. You see, not everyone uses EasyMOD, especially on heavily modded boards. So when installing manually, it becomes necessary to run the "database updater" file. When using EM, it's done automatically. Notice at the begginning of the MOD installation template:

#
#-----[ SQL ]------------------------------------------
#
# IMPORTANT ***** Remember to change the default TABLE PREFIX below if your board does not use " phpbb_ ". ***** IMPORTANT
#
INSERT INTO `phpbb_config` (`config_name`, `config_value`)
VALUES ('username_hide_inac', '1');

Then at the end, you have this "Do-it-Yourself" action:

#
#-----[ DIY INSTRUCTIONS ]------------------------------------------
#
IMPORTANT ***** If you are NOT using EasyMOD to install User Shield, you MUST update the CONFIG table by following these instructions ***** IMPORTANT
IMPORTANT ***** Remember to change the default TABLE PREFIX in file "update_config_v1_2_1.php" if your board does not use " phpbb_ ". ***** IMPORTANT

1] Run this file: update_config_v1_2_1.php - located in the install folder off the root of your forum ( eg. In your browser URL field, type the following: http://yoursite.com/yourforumroot/insta ... v1_2_1.php )

Once done a message confirming a successful update will be displayed along with a reminder to delete the "install" folder including it's content, before returning to your forum.

It's one or the other but not both, as you'll get that error message.

I did not check the "Complete Installation" button in EasyMod. So what now? (lol... so much for "easy" mod)

Well, I have to admit that it's my turn to be a little confused since you've mentionned that you installed it manually. When attempting to install it with EM the second time around, it should of given you a whole bunch of "unprocessed actions" as it would not of been able to find the original lines of code, which you have manually modified. Did you restart from scratch? If you review my "introductory" post above, can you see the "memberlist filtered list" when logged in as an administrator?

[PS - in my earlier post by "validation", I mean I ran the your .txt file through EasyMod's validation webpage, and it gave an error.

I'm sorry but I'm still not sure what you're referring to if my initial explanation was off the mark. On the other hand if you are referring to this:

• phpBB2 MOD validator tool

[/url]
... this MOD would not of been validated without being compliant.

Thanks for the help Wolf, I apologize for my noob status.

You're very welcome indeed, and don't worry about the noobness thing, we all go through it whether we admit it or not (it is confusing the first time).


Give me some feedback,
Wolf