Looking for paid assistance to upgrade and address "spam" comment issue

[Craig Walsh]

We have just moved from one hosting company to another -- and now have a much faster dedicated server.  The folks at Website Movers moved our CPG site across, and it seems to be working well.

It needs to be upgraded (currently v 1.5.22).  I think I could figure out how to do this myself, but I also need help figuring out how to stop the "spam" comments.

We have the Askimet plug-in and it has stopped 32,000 "spam" comments.  We have turned off new registrations, and have limited comments to registered users.  Notwithstanding this, there are still thousands of comments for me to delete.  As these comments do not appear on the site until they are approved by me (and they are never approved) I wonder how and why people are bothering with them.  They go nowhere.

So my project -- for which I am happy to pay -- is to upgrade CPG to the latest version, and to try to figure out how to stop the "spam" comments.  I'd love to turn the comment feature back on, even for guests, but to try to prevent automated comments, etc.

If you can help, please contact me via the board.  I will reply promptly.  Thanks for your interest.

Craig

[gmc]

Craig,

Quite honestly, the upgrade from 1.5.22 to 1.5.36 is very simple.. Unless you have modified core code (beyond running plugins) - the docs describe the few steps needed.
I typically have helped when upgrades cross version boundaries (1.4.x to 1.5.x) which can be more involved.
I'd recommend doing it yourself (and question/answer help here is free...) - but certainly can assist/do the upgrade if you wish.

"Spam" is another issue... whether Coppermine, other gallery or forum software, guestbook scripts - they never seem to get tired of entering useless registrations and/or comments for us to delete. And they aren't all automated... I can certainly write a script to automate deleting unapproved registrations/comments older than x days - or some other criteria - but writing a spam catcher better than Askimet is a challenge.
Personally I've password protected registrations (they have to ask me for the global password to enter a registration) and disabled comments.
Happy to discuss ideas - but the world seems to keep making 'better' spammers...

Greg

[ISANexusDev]

It needs to be upgraded (currently v 1.5.22).  I think I could figure out how to do this myself, but I also need help figuring out how to stop the "spam" comments.

We have the Askimet plug-in and it has stopped 32,000 "spam" comments.  We have turned off new registrations, and have limited comments to registered users.  Notwithstanding this, there are still thousands of comments for me to delete.  As these comments do not appear on the site until they are approved by me (and they are never approved) I wonder how and why people are bothering with them.  They go nowhere.

So my project -- for which I am happy to pay -- is to upgrade CPG to the latest version, and to try to figure out how to stop the "spam" comments.  I'd love to turn the comment feature back on, even for guests, but to try to prevent automated comments, etc.

If you can help, please contact me via the board.  I will reply promptly.  Thanks for your interest.

Craig

Maybe I can help. You can write me at forum messaging system.