SCAM: W3rocks List of Pligg, Scuttle, PHP Dug, Hotaru CMS Sites

[Nick]

It was always just a matter of time before Hotaru would be added to the lists used by spammers SEO professionals, and the guys at w3rocks.com seem ever-so excited about the addition of Hotaru CMS, but...

To those considering spending money on automated submission tools and lists of bookmarking sites:

You cannot automatically submit posts to Hotaru CMS sites!

If you have found this post via Google before buying the list of sites from W3rocks, or any automated submission tool like Bookmarking Demon or AutoPligg, please be aware that your user name, email address and IP will be blacklisted on a global database used by both Hotaru CMS and Pligg. For Hotaru admins, it's a simple process to blacklist any user who attempts to submit off-topic posts.

Even just attempting to submit a post will have you jumping through hoops - and you won't be able to do it automatically, that's for sure.

First, you've got to register. Not every hotaru site has user registration enabled, but if it is, you still have to beat reCaptcha and an admin-defined captcha question. Then, you'll have to confirm your email address. Once you've done that, depending on the site's custom settings, you'll probably have to sit in a pending queue until the admin approves your registration.

If you are approved, you'll still face another series of walls:

1. Is this site a social bookmarking site? Hotaru CMS is no more a bookmarking platform than Drupal. If the admin hasn't enabled a post submission plugin, then you can't submit any posts!

2. Even if the admin is using a bookmarking plugin, that doesn't mean it's turned on. Some sites restrict post submission to admins only - just like Wordpress.

3. Even if it is enabled for other members, not all usergroups have permission to post - that's up to the site admin.

4. Even if your usergroup does have permission to post, that doesn't mean you have permission to post. Hotaru allows site admins to set individual permissions or assign permissions based on previous usage.

5. Even if you do have permission to post, you will more than likely find your post waiting in a moderation queue.

6. When the site admin checks your post, he will most likely physically delete it with one click and send you straight onto that global blacklist.

7. If by some miracle your post does make it onto the site, it will be physically deleted by a moderator or flagged into physical deletion by other users.

8. Finally, if you're lucky enough to have found a rare, abandoned Hotaru site that does no checks whatsoever, and your post is published... it will have the nofollow tag.

So think again before you waste your money on false promises of backlinks and high Google rankings.

[Tony]

That is the main reason I do not like to give credit to the hard working people of any software, I prefer to donate so i can remover all credit from the user side., I had really bad experience with pligg an other open source scripts, this spamers find you at google, just by typing the name of the software and add you to their list and you will have to be alert 24/7 or your website will be all viagra and junk...but l thanks Nick and the Hotaru developmen team for all the great plugins to fight the spam head on. on the other hand pligg is all for profit they do not cares, you have to buy the plugin that do not stop this spamers.

[angolanmade]

Awesome post! Hotaru CMS was developed with a focus on spam controls. Great job by everybody that continues to contribute.

[Nick]

Forgot to mention the registration checks against the site's "Blocked List" and the shared, global database of spammers. Also forgot to mention that posting a story also runs checks against the "Blocked List". Oh! I forgot we have Akismet, too!

[Nick]

Look what a quick Google search for "w3rocks" pulls up:



But perhaps more effective in preventing people spamming Hotaru sites is this one?



If you can, please link to this thread to help keep it near the top when people search for lists of Hotaru sites. The point being that you cannot automatically submit posts to Hotaru CMS sites, period.

[rushnp774]

Ugh, I hate the way sleezeballs try to make easy money on the Net. Fantastic job with the anti-spam capabilities Nick, and I'm sure there will only be improvement in that department as time goes by. I've only received one or two spams by the same user, and have since killspammed him. Works like a charm so far!

[apfind]

Great Job Nick!

[James Stein]

See it is people like that I really get ticked off about .... In the last 16 months I have done 4.5 million bookmarks for customers and no this was not spam.... I went through 200 sites of mine the other day (pligg) and out of 200 of them 95 stopped taking submissions 100% ... I still could login my account but they removed the submission page from the server.

I call these idiots SpaMarketers, as all they do is ruin good sites.. This is why I built my own private network from phpdug that only my members can submit to. I will build a private network using hotaru now that only my members can submit to as all register links/pages submit links/pages will not exist (submit will be renamed to work only with my submission system, which is not spam software it is an online tool only accessed by my members)...

A suggestion that might help ... On your next update or someone could even create a plugin.. Allow admin to specify the the form names and values that are required for submission.

For example:

 <form name=<?php echo SUBMIT_NAME; ?>' action='http://www.mydomain.com/index.php?page=submit2' method='post'>
    <table>
        
    <tr>
        <td>Title:&nbsp; </td>
        <td><input type='text' id='post_title' name='<?php echo POST_TITLE; ?>' value='blah blah'></td>
    </tr>
    
        <tr>

        <td style='vertical-align: top;'>Description:&nbsp; </td>
        <td>
            <textarea id='post_content' name='<?php echo POST_CONTENT; ?>' rows='6'></textarea>
        </td>
    </tr>

And the same with the submit button, this is not full proof as they could always register for the site and look at the HTML but point is admin can also change it anytime they want since it will be now controlled by the database and not hardcoded..

Just an idea .... These people tick me off too because they ruin so many freaking sites online.. Look at twitter, nothing but a spam-fest and same thing happen to myspace and is starting to happen to facebook..

James

[thatgirlisfunny]

Well done, Nick! The SPAM catchers are brilliant. One SEO specialist I know who sends me links - in a friendly way - through email had trouble registering. Now I understand why! He's probably already black-listed. Simply brilliant!