Symphony.

I’m looking to create a simple spam preventer not using javascript.

Some of the ideas in this thread are ideal, but I’m not entirely sure how I would actually make them. Would anyone like to demonstrate how to make a simple math one?

Cheers.

I strongly suggest not to use any captcha service at the first place.

Have you tried akismet to filter all incoming messages? I have found this to be equally effective, and less of a pain for your users.

I’ve just completed the Stop Forum Spam extension that works with a database of user submitted spammers (it’s huge). Have a look at the extension page for more info, and yes it does work on things other than forums.

It is strongly suggested that you implement more than one method. I’ve done lots of research on this subject, and plan to write a tutorial when I get some time.

Good Extensions are:

• reCAPTCHA
• Askimet Spam Filtering
• Can of Spam Filter
• Stop Forum Spam

Nothing is 100% preventative, but the more you implement, the better, although as David states here, you may annoy users if you implement too many that they have to actively think about and action. The Can of Spam and my Stop Forum Spam do the work for the user, so more like this is better.

There is another spam thread here.

@designermonkey - Cheers for those, I’ll have to have a look at the ones without any user interaction and see what happens! I dislike reCAPTCHA, often find it hard to read myself!

@wisolman - I’ve actually got something like that set up for blog comments, but this is one for a contact form so I need to prevent the spam beforehand otherwise I get e-mailed! Thanks anyway!

Just to update on the situation - Can of Span and Stop Forum spam have failed to stop any spam. I’ve implemented the reCapture from the extension, but it’s so hard to read, 80 - 90% of the time it’s human proof! A lot of the words aren’t even words too, which makes it even harder.

Is there anyway to change some settings to make it easier for humans too read? I know that defeats the point of it, but not being able to read it at all defeats the point of the contact form - so I need a happy medium between the two!

Haven’t looked at Askimet as I’d prefer a free one.

Any ideas?

Can of Spam is intended to stop people just plain posting to the url. They have to actually load the page. Stop Forum Spam checks that the username and email haven’t already been logged as spam in their database.

There are plans to update the Stop Forum Spam extension to have a Preferences panel that lets you choose Comment sections, then it will add an option to the section page to send them to the Stop Forum Spam database.

Instead of CAPTCHA (which I personally hate!) leave the methods in place that you already have, and try something like Craig has done on this site, for user registration. It asks a question that only a human can answer, and expects a specific value in the back end. It’s kind of like the Can of Spam filter, only the user has to physically enter the value.

If these don’t make any dent in your spam count, then it sounds like a person is doing it by hand, which is quite likely.

I hope you can start winning!

Oh, and Askimet is free! Yo can use a paid version, which has a higher priority over free accounts, and no throttles, but they work the same.

You could also try this jQuery slider, which I will be implementing on a site soon.

You could try a reverse captcha and see if that solves your problems.