phpBB2 vs Spam bots vs Decent web sites
I noticed I never talk about the technical aspects of my job. Well... they are quite boring after all, but yesterday I had an interesting evening.
We've been having a problem of late with our forums, that of it being totally overwhelmed by spam bots that keep posting adult oriented crap. I've installed a few counter measures that never seemed to do the job as the bots became smarter and smarter. Yesterday I had enough of it and after looking around I found an entry by a guy who had a decent work around to the problem. He manually inserted a simple verifiable question in the registration form which basically stops the bot in it's tracks because it won't know what to do next. I copied his tip and the results where instantaneous. The only way around this is to either program a bot that will be specifically target to my forums or to have a human do the entries manually. Either way, it's going to be a bother for them, and that is already good enough for me. I can also change the question and the answer quite easily.
The solution is simple, but then again, I'm not into PHP programming and I would have never though of that.
I also got in an interesting discussion about web site design. A group which I won't identify is currently quite proud of doing business with what I love to call a "hub service". It's mostly a web site that offers forums and other tools like calendars and dynamic lists to keep in touch with people who are in league with whatever you are doing. They are spruced up on the fly really, you just go there, check in the options you want and bingo - your very own web site ready to be used. Most of the time I find those things absolutely useless, more specifically, they are left unused. They are cheaply made without any thought for design and cluttered with useless information or ask you to rely on gadgets that are hidden just one layer too deep to be noticed.
It's simple. People who visite a web site stay there for LESS THAN 5 SECONDS before they unconsciously make the decision to stay or leave. You have that amount of time to hook your user into thinking that whatever he is looking at will grant him what he wants. Not only should pages be free of clutter, they should also provide very clear cut links to what you need. By that I mean keep things visible and well named. All the bells and whistles in the world won't help you attract more traffic or more use from your intended users, in fact most of the time they become an obstacle that users will have to choose whether they will cope with them or not.
I should not have to link you one of the best designed web sites that currently exists but I will do it anyway...
Long story short, I did a new version of their web site with only an extra forum added in the mix. Literally took 5 minutes to thrown something up in Photoshop as a basic design idea. The thing was adopted. It's also free to use vs that other monster that you have to pay every month. I'd show you the web site but I won't.
We've been having a problem of late with our forums, that of it being totally overwhelmed by spam bots that keep posting adult oriented crap. I've installed a few counter measures that never seemed to do the job as the bots became smarter and smarter. Yesterday I had enough of it and after looking around I found an entry by a guy who had a decent work around to the problem. He manually inserted a simple verifiable question in the registration form which basically stops the bot in it's tracks because it won't know what to do next. I copied his tip and the results where instantaneous. The only way around this is to either program a bot that will be specifically target to my forums or to have a human do the entries manually. Either way, it's going to be a bother for them, and that is already good enough for me. I can also change the question and the answer quite easily.
The solution is simple, but then again, I'm not into PHP programming and I would have never though of that.
I also got in an interesting discussion about web site design. A group which I won't identify is currently quite proud of doing business with what I love to call a "hub service". It's mostly a web site that offers forums and other tools like calendars and dynamic lists to keep in touch with people who are in league with whatever you are doing. They are spruced up on the fly really, you just go there, check in the options you want and bingo - your very own web site ready to be used. Most of the time I find those things absolutely useless, more specifically, they are left unused. They are cheaply made without any thought for design and cluttered with useless information or ask you to rely on gadgets that are hidden just one layer too deep to be noticed.
It's simple. People who visite a web site stay there for LESS THAN 5 SECONDS before they unconsciously make the decision to stay or leave. You have that amount of time to hook your user into thinking that whatever he is looking at will grant him what he wants. Not only should pages be free of clutter, they should also provide very clear cut links to what you need. By that I mean keep things visible and well named. All the bells and whistles in the world won't help you attract more traffic or more use from your intended users, in fact most of the time they become an obstacle that users will have to choose whether they will cope with them or not.
I should not have to link you one of the best designed web sites that currently exists but I will do it anyway...
Long story short, I did a new version of their web site with only an extra forum added in the mix. Literally took 5 minutes to thrown something up in Photoshop as a basic design idea. The thing was adopted. It's also free to use vs that other monster that you have to pay every month. I'd show you the web site but I won't.