Hello - there's a few tricks you can use in Drupal without installing anything extra - the first thing I'd do is add a profile field (similar to the "homepage" and "first convention attended" fields you already have) but make it mandatory. You'll probably want to think up what that should be, I'd suggest something random like "shoe size" which everyone should have, and nobody will mind entering, but that a spambot won't be expecting.
The next trick is just to relocate your registration page using an "url alias". I found this drastically reduced the number of bots that actually found the form on my site - apparently a lot of them just look automatically for "yoursite.com/user/register" and will simply move on if they don't find it. Look up URL Aliases in your admin pages (it may be under "site building" and use the Add Alias tab to create a redirect from "?q=user/register" to something unique to you, such as "?=convention/membership". Next, setup another alias for "?=node" as "?q=user/register" and the bots looking for the latter will just end up at the home page. Note that URL aliases depend on the Path module, which I'm pretty sure is core to drupal, but if you can't find it I might be wrong!
There a couple of good additional modules I'd recommend - CAPTCHA is the obvious one you've already mentioned. On it's own it will do simple text captcha's like math puzzles, but to configure it for the more effective image captchas you also need the textimage module, and it's a little trickier to get working. Another good one is spam - it's an easy install and actually vets comments for obvious signs of spam, like repeated links etc. You can also allow other users to report spam with it.
One last easy fix - under User Management, you can set new accounts to admin approval only, so you get to vet all new accounts before they get posting priviledges. That'll up your workload though, and it's tricky guessing who's "real" and who's not..
Hope that helps - CD knows where to find me if not!
The existing Drupal site is 4.6 based. Is it worth me moving to 5.x now. Is there a simple automated upgrade path? I am tending towards creating a brand new site and copying the content over by hand.
Drupal only maintain two releases at any one time, so - with both 5.x and 6.x now out (and 7.x already on the way) it's probably time to let go of 4. It doesn't need to be a painful process though.
The first thing to do is make a list of any third party modules you've installed. Whichever version you move to, you need to check that there are 5.x or 6.x versions of those modules, depending - as 6.x is a little more "bleeding edge" you're more likely to find some gaps there, but if it does what you need then definitely go for it.
Make a backup of the site and database files etc, particularly the .htaccess file in your root directory and any theme files you've changed. That done, the actual upgrade is generally as simple as uploading the new files (including any new third party modules), logging into your main admin account (eg user number 1), and running the update script (yoursite.com/update.php) which should automatically upgrade the database etc.
The next trick is just to relocate your registration page using an "url alias". I found this drastically reduced the number of bots that actually found the form on my site - apparently a lot of them just look automatically for "yoursite.com/user/register" and will simply move on if they don't find it. Look up URL Aliases in your admin pages (it may be under "site building" and use the Add Alias tab to create a redirect from "?q=user/register" to something unique to you, such as "?=convention/membership". Next, setup another alias for "?=node" as "?q=user/register" and the bots looking for the latter will just end up at the home page. Note that URL aliases depend on the Path module, which I'm pretty sure is core to drupal, but if you can't find it I might be wrong!
There a couple of good additional modules I'd recommend - CAPTCHA is the obvious one you've already mentioned. On it's own it will do simple text captcha's like math puzzles, but to configure it for the more effective image captchas you also need the textimage module, and it's a little trickier to get working. Another good one is spam - it's an easy install and actually vets comments for obvious signs of spam, like repeated links etc. You can also allow other users to report spam with it.
One last easy fix - under User Management, you can set new accounts to admin approval only, so you get to vet all new accounts before they get posting priviledges. That'll up your workload though, and it's tricky guessing who's "real" and who's not..
Hope that helps - CD knows where to find me if not!
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The existing Drupal site is 4.6 based. Is it worth me moving to 5.x now. Is there a simple automated upgrade path? I am tending towards creating a brand new site and copying the content over by hand.
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The first thing to do is make a list of any third party modules you've installed. Whichever version you move to, you need to check that there are 5.x or 6.x versions of those modules, depending - as 6.x is a little more "bleeding edge" you're more likely to find some gaps there, but if it does what you need then definitely go for it.
Make a backup of the site and database files etc, particularly the .htaccess file in your root directory and any theme files you've changed. That done, the actual upgrade is generally as simple as uploading the new files (including any new third party modules), logging into your main admin account (eg user number 1), and running the update script (yoursite.com/update.php) which should automatically upgrade the database etc.
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http://drupal.org/project/recaptcha
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