I solved another problem with my message board that means I won’t be so hasty to migrate to new software, which takes a load of work off my plate. The main problem with the YaBB board (other than its habit of ceasing to work every couple of years) is that it is a magnet for spammers who come by, register and then post a bunch of linky messages that I have to tidy up.
To curtail this, I added a captcha to the registration process (to get rid of bots) and then, when it turned out that there were a bunch of determined humans out there registering these accounts, I enforced administrative approval before an account was activated. However, that meant that I had to clean out 30-50 junky registrations every damned day, so finally, before the board crash of May ’12, I turned off registration altogether.
I did a little research and found a BoardMod that seems to be doing the trick. In addition to the captcha, there is now a question that must be answered by a human. In the simplest form, the question can be 2 + 3 = ? or What color is the sky? This particular mod lets you customize your own questions, so I put in five that are based on Stephen King knowledge. Not terribly hard ones, but since I implemented it I’ve had absolutely no successful attempts to register by spammers. None. Zero. They’re still trying, at the rate of about ten an hour, but the Skill Testing Question has defeated them. Yay!
I have a short story in the forthcoming anthology Appalachian Undead edited by Eugene Johnson for The Zombie Feed Press. The cover is a cool wraparound painted by Courtney Skinner. Here is the table of contents:
- When Granny Comes Marchin’ Home Again – Elizabeth Massie
- Calling Death – Jonathan Maberry
- Hide and Seek – Tim Waggoner
- Twilight of the Zombie Game Preserve – S. Clayton Rhodes
- Being in Shadow – Maurice Broaddus
- Sitting up with the Dead- Bev Vincent
- The Girl and the Guardian – Simon McCaffery
- Repent, Jessie Shimmer! -Lucy Snyder
- Almost Heaven -Michael Paul Gonzalez
- On Stagger – G. Cameron Fuller
- We Take Care of Our Own – John Everson
- Sleeper – Tim Lebbon
- Reckless – Eliot Parker
- Company’s Coming – Ronald Kelly
- Black Friday – Karin Fuller
- Spoiled – Paul Moore
- Miranda Jo’s Girl – Steve Rasnic Tem
- Times Is Tough in Musky Holler – John Skipp & Dori Miller
- Long Days to Come – K. Allen Wood
- Brother Hollis Gives His Final Sermon from a Rickety Make-Shift Pulpit in the Remains of a Smokehouse that now Serves as His Church – Gary A. Braunbeck
