guestbook spam

Well I guess one could be written for that. But to be able to use the robots.txt file to prevent it you would have to know what its name was.

JTD wrote:Well I guess one could be written for that. But to be able to use the robots.txt file to prevent it you would have to know what its name was.

It was my understanding that using User-agent: * was telling all bots to stay out of whatever folder you designate

a bot is a program that goes around the net following links. robots.txt is a file that was agreed as a standard to tell these bots where they could and could not go. The spammers will be using either a program or a script which has a list of sites using the guestbook and the exact url for the addentry page. It just sends the add entry info and nothing else.

Thanks Carbonize for explaining....makes more sense now

I've followed the readme file and have the image verification in place now, but I've run into a problem. There are only 7 characters shown, you can't see the 8th one, it shows blank.

I also noticed the characters did not change when I refresh the addentry page as well. I saw it did that in your book Carbonize.

I did change the 8 character numbers again from step 1 in the readme file, but still only 7 characters appear and it won't change when I refresh the page.

Do you have any ideas what I could have done wrong? Here is my addentry page....
http://dreamworkdesigns.com/guestbook/addentry.php

I thought you would want to know that there is a typo in the readme file for #3 - Open addentry.php. Verification is spelled wrong twice

Thanks for any help

Deb

Hi could you send me the verify.php so I can have a look.

Have you tried changing the numbers again?

Thanks.....I've sent you the verify.php to the email address on your website

Deb

Hey, I've begun to install your verify mod. but following thru the readme file, i have come across something....

If you use a footer file for your site place the include code between the echo $gb_post->process; and the die();

Find
function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;
Replace it with
function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS,$Vrand;

Find
function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG;
Replace with
function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG,$Vrand;

Ok there's 2 things.
Firstly..

If you use a footer file for your site place the include code between the echo $gb_post->process; and the die();

Could you please tell me the relivance of this? eg. What include code?

Secondly..I couldn't even find the following things in my addentry.php file:

Find
function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;

AND

Find
function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG;

So what do I do?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Hi Phil...I was wondering the same thing too about the footer file, can't help you there. I ignored the footer part in the readme and got the image verification working. But I think I can help with the lines you are looking for....they are in the add.class.php file, not the addentry.php

function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;

starts on about line 295

function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG;

starts on about line 330

Hope that helps a bit

Deb

There is a problem with the image verification mod in guestbook 2.2 but I am working on it.

As for PHP includes I'll give a quick explanation.

The PHP function include() is used to add the contents of one file into the current file. For example <?php include("data.txt"); ?> would add the content of data.txt into the output of the current file at the point the code is at.

I'll simplify further. Every page on my site is actually made up for three seperate files, a header, the content and a footer. Every page uses the include code to add the header file to the start of the content and the footer file to the end of it. This makes updating navigation and the like easy as it's only a single file. The layout of a page is like this:

You then save the file with the .php extension and when the page is requested your server passes the page to PHP which then sends the file but with the content of header.txt at the start of the file and footer.txt's contents the end.

The reason for all the /mnt/htdocs is because my pages are spread over several directories (folders) and so I use the absolute path for the file names.

Awesome, thanks Deb for that and thanks Carbonize for that also.

If you use a footer file for your site place the include code between the echo $gb_post->process; and the die();

Carbonize, if I did use a footer file on my site, which include code would I put between the echo?

I still don't quite understand the point of your statement, lol.
Sorry to be a hassle.

Thanks for your help.

the statement was more for people that already use footer files. I use the same footer file for my guestbook as for every other page I just made the footer.php file that comes with the guestbook blank. This way the guestbook fits in with my site.

is what i meant.

OK I have updated the file to include full instructions for 2.2 and 2.3.1 now. It has been tested on both versions and seems to be working fine.

http://www.carbonize.co.uk/verification.zip.

in lib/add.class.php
Find
function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS;
for 2.2 find
function form_addguest() {
global $HTTP_SERVER_VARS;

2.3.1 replace it with
function form_addguest() {
global $GB_PG, $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS, $Vrand;

2.2 replace it with
function form_addguest() {
global $HTTP_SERVER_VARS, $Vrand;

Find
function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG;
2.2 users find
function preview_entry() {
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()==1) {

2.3.1 replace it with
function preview_entry() {
global $GB_PG, $Vrand;

2.2 replace it with
function preview_entry() {
global $Vrand;
if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()==1) {

Awesome.
Thanks a heap for clearing that it all up.

Phil.

Hi Deb and everyone else,

cdnmama wrote:Hi Dan.....if you want to have a background image, you would edit the header.php file in the templates directory. Find this line at the bottom....

To change the top header graphic, you would edit the body.php file in the templates directory. Find this line towards the top....

....hope that helps
Deb

Thanks a lot. After quite some work, have a look at what it came out to...

Dan

Just looked at your site Dan and noticed you show the images to indicate both valid HTML and valid CSS but your site is neither. http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//dan-bourdon.com/index.php and http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//dan-bourdon.com/index.php.

I would also like ot say you could cut your body css entry down from

body {
color: #5A5146; background-color:#DFD0C0; background-image: url(../Musique/partitions/bkgrnd.jpg);
background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: fixed !important;

to

body { color: #5A5146; background: #DFD0C0 url(../Musique/partitions/bkgrnd.jpg) repeat fixed };