Well, let's start giving small tips on optimizing and promoting sites (forums) on phpBB. In this case, we will carry out a small hack that will help get rid of the external link of the form " Powered by phpBB ©...". In this publication, we will consider 2 ways in which you can do this - a technique for phpBB 3.x.x.
Removing an External Link Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group and Russian phpBB Support
The first way to remove an external link labeled Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. And so, the most easy way- uninstall using the admin panel. We go into the administrative panel, go to the "Styles" menu item, on the left we see the panel where the block in the menu is located, we are interested in the "Style Components" block, and in it "Templates". According to the standard, in the proposed window we will see the following: prosilver and subsilver2, although there may be others if you installed them. In general, it's not the point. From the proposed set, select the default one. Click on the "edit" button next to the template. Next, a window appears asking you to "Select a template file". Next, select "Template file" - "overall_footer.html". An HTML editor appears below. We find the following code: Powered by phpBB 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group"and just delete it, although you can set your own link and inscription."
(TRANSLATION_INFO)
" (which is below, can also be deleted) - this code is responsible for localization, for example, an external link with the inscription "Russian phpBB support".
The second way to remove an external link that says Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group. This method is similar, but we connect to the site via ftp pratacol. Go to the following path styles/template_name/template/overall_footer.html. And we edit the same code that we edited above. If you change the code, then do not forget to set the UTF encoding - so "crazy" (squares, and other incomprehensible characters) may appear in place of the anchors.
If someone does not know, Simple Machine Forum- for short, SMF is, as stated on the official website, a free, professional-level package that will allow you to organize your own online community in a few minutes. on this engine, you can see here. I myself put my forum on it (by the way, visit FreeForum.biz).
It doesn't matter how much or how little spam appears on your forum. The important thing is that you spend your precious time on moderation. Setting up a plugin that will do all the work for you takes a few minutes, and it will save you a total of days and months, which will add up from the minutes that you would spend deleting messages and deleting users.
I will note that I tried to fight spammers on my own - I blocked access by IP and even by subnets. It really worked, it filtered out a lot of garbage, but, nevertheless, once every one or two days someone made its way. And quite a lot of time was spent on replenishing the database of banned IPs. I thought that there must be a more convenient way, and it really was!
1. Installing and configuring Stop Spammer
In two weeks of operation, this plugin blocked 2202 fake users. Each of them would leave at least one message. Spammers are not going to slow down and every day I would spend time clearing my forum.
Instead, every few days I go to the user management page and see something like this:
I turn to the section "Awaiting approval" (these are the spammers found who are unable to leave messages until they are approved accounts administrator). I put a tick "Select all" and delete them with one click:
That's it, all spam accounts go to oblivion. Back to our list of users:
It can be seen that the list has noticeably thinned, but who are the rest? Select all and send with one button for verification:
One “red” appeared, we immediately delete it. If you have free time, you can do others. If there is no time, then do nothing with new users - most of them will "blush" on subsequent checks. If you have time, you can go to their profiles and see - if there is a link in the signature - immediately banned, these are fake accounts of spammers who will never leave a single useful message.
I told you how to use this magical plugin, now I will tell you how to install it.
Download two files: language_full.zip (this is language pack for translating the plugin) and StopSpammer_v2_3_9.zip (the number may be different, as versions are updated). Unzip the contents of the StopSpammer_v2_3_9.zip archive to some folder. Unzip the language_full.zip archive into the same folder, agree to replace the files. Now zip our folder.
Go to the admin panel to install packages. Opposite the inscription "Download package" there is a button for selecting a file on the computer. Choose our new archive (where we replaced the language file), upload it to the forum and activate the package.
That's it!
Additional plugin configuration takes place in the admin panel: go to
Users → Registration → Settings
You can leave the default values there. There is also a "Your API key" field. Without this key, you won't be able to report new spammers (but the plugin will work and filter known spammers). If you want to get your own API key, go to www.stopforumspam.com to register, and then enter the key here. If you have not received the key yet, leave the field blank. Then the default key will be used.
2. Installing and configuring Anti-Spam Links
Adherents of the SEO religion (you can see more about my attitude towards SEO-nists in another) have a strong conviction that by increasing the number of links to their site, they “promote” it (for some reason, the idea of creating interesting and high-quality content is not intended for anyone from they don't come to mind). There would be a sucker, but there are ways to get money from him. So, some "citizens" provide services for "running" sites on forums. They create a large number of accounts on different forums and paste there backlinks in signatures and other available fields. Despite the fact that even “seo-experimenters” have already proven by experience that these links are of no use, some warn that you can get banned from search engines, Yandex, for example, simply ignores links on ALL forums and sites where anyone can leave links. Google also has similar algorithms - ignoring links in comments, etc. But the law is not written for suckers ... Therefore, we, the owners of forums, have to reckon with the facts that "cool SEO-optimizers" order a "run" of their shit crafts for a thousand rubles.
The plugin will cut out a lot Stop Spammer. But we can help him! It is possible to knock out from under the feet of spammers the very interest to post links on your forum. This is exactly what is needed Anti-Spam Links. This plugin (specific numbers can be changed in the settings) does this:
- those who, for example, have less than five messages, cannot leave links at all
- those who, for example, have less than 15 posts cannot leave active links, http:// is removed from links and in general these links become nubolinks (newbielink)
- those with, for example, less than 50 posts can leave active links, but all links receive the nofollow attribute.
- well, those with more than 50 posts can insert the most common active links that transfer site weight to the page they link to.
Believe me, would-be SEOs are very attentive to the form in which their link gets to the site. They will lose interest in your forum very quickly if they cannot easily post their shit links to their shit sites there.
Yes, by the way, the above rules work in such fields as signatures.
To install this plugin, go to its official page. Download anti_spam_links_v1.0.1.zip archive (number may be different). Again in the forum admin, go to install packages (as you did with the previous package) and install it. There is no language file for this package, so you do not need to unpack the archive or do anything with it.
To configure the plugin, go to the section
Config → Configure Mods… → Configure Mods
At your request, put down how many messages the user should have to upgrade their capabilities.
Conclusion
These two plugins will VERY make life easier for you, the forum owner, and save a lot of time. However, from time to time spammers break through and, at least once a week, you need to “thin out” users and delete spam messages. Therefore, do not abandon your web resources!
The size of the web page and the speed of its loading have become relevant again. Content loading speed is becoming one of the criteria for ranking search results. A lot has already been written about GZip and Deflate compression, as well as about server-side caching. Let's talk about headers.
So, your ASP.NET application, among others, sends the following headers to the client (values may vary):
- server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
- X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
- X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727
- (optional) X-AspNetMvc-Version: 1.0
Now to business.
Remove the X-AspNet-Version header.
Everything is simple here. It is enough to add a line to web.config:< httpRuntime enableVersionHeader ="false" />
Removing the X-AspNetMvc-Version header
If you are using the ASP.NET MVC framework, add this code to the Application_Start handler in the Global.asax file:MvcHandler.DisableMvcResponseHeader = true ;
Removing the X-Powered-By header
We launch the IIS administration snap-in and go to the "service" tab in the properties of the website:If you have IIS7 - everything is similar:
Removing the Server header
Everything is more complicated here. This header is added by IIS itself, so you have to clean it up "by hand", using a small hack, again, in Global.asax, in the Application_PreSendRequestHeaders handler://everything ingenious is simple
HttpContext .Current.Response.Headers.Remove("Server" );
Unfortunately, this will only work with the Integrated Pipeline Mode setting - read - "only in IIS7" enabled. For IIS6, you will have to resort to the help of a free utility from Microsoft -