I tried to allow guests to post and this is what happened...

[Elliot Marx]

I was so excited that I could "finally" allow guests to posts while at the same time not have to worry about spam.

After trying this for 3 weeks, I ended up getting hundreds of spam messages so I finally gave up. All of the usual Cialis/medical ads/porn crap

I thought hCaptcha was the solution but apparently it doesn't do much of anything.

I feel so let down by this...is there any way to allow guests to post which won't invite ridiculous levels of spam? I noticed the email verification is good in weeding new members...is there any way to set up a similar email verification for guest posts?

Elliot

[Miss_B]

If a guest makes a post and/or creates a topic, they will not be allowed to complete them unless they register. Post before register is the name of the option that makes this possible. Have you enabled it?

[Jim M]

Guest posting is, unfortunately, always going to have a spam counterpart to it to a degree as you will have human and bot spammers. You could ensure that hCaptcha is enabled to it's hardest degree in your settings. However, that still might not be enough and will let in human spammers or sophisticated bots.

As @Miss_B stated, using something like Post Before Register would be advised if you want to add in additional validation steps for posters/users but want to have them start creating their post before registering (an illusion of guest posting).

[Elliot Marx]

Yes I have post before registering set. In order for this to really work, I'll need to get email notification or I'll have no idea if someone is trying to post. Is this possible to set up?

Elliot

[Randy Calvert]

That’s not how it works. The admin does not get an email. The person posting gets an email inviting them to finish registering for their post to show. 

[Elliot Marx]

Hello Randy,

Thanks for explaining but then that means the "Post before register" function is useless for my forum. It just makes things so difficult for people who want to interact with me that most won't even bother and will just go straight to social media like Facebook and Instagram or email / call us directly to interact. The issue is social media posts and threads are all "here today gone tomorrow" blog style posts, and email / phone calls are all 1-1 communication only so I need to recommunicate and repost this info. I want to pull customer interactions over to our own forum so I can pin Q&A style interactions and easily reference them from our main website. The product I'm trying to sell is already difficult and complex, so this style of interaction will allow customers in the know to help customers who are struggling, and sometimes even present us with useful tips we can easily share with others.

For me a more useful guest function is "Let the admin know I want to post this" along with the contents of the actual post. Then I could log into control panel, see a notification at the top when this is happening, and reject or approve the posts one at a time.

Please do something about this. I'm getting weary of not being able to get good use of a true "forum" for over a decade. The forum still just functions for me mostly as a basic non-interactive website.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Elliot Marx

[Jim M]

Unfortunately, if you allow Guest posting, you are going to deal with spam at some level. If you wish to allow guest posting, you could enable the member group setting: "Require approval before content shows?" and manually approve each post. This would allow you to review posts so only non-spam would get through your manual reviewal.

Otherwise, if your audience is on Facebook/Instagram, have you considered enabling Facebook login? This might ease your "barrier" to registration while keeping spam chances lower because guests cannot post.