Seoulscapade

I wanted to allow people to leave comments on my PHP Fusion site without the hassle of registration or logging in. That process has always annoyed me about sites, when all I have wanted to do was say thanks or something, and not be forced to jump through hoops to do so.

When attempting to implement a quick and easy system, I was confronted with two main issues:

1. Php Fusion doesn’t allow a method via the back end administration to allow commenting by guest users.
2. Open commenting is asking for trouble from spammers who bombard your site with porn links, etc.

(UPDATE TO WHAT FOLLOWS: note that I still have received spam. If a person whats to post it, there’s nothing you can do, except disable comments altogether. If a bot it still getting through, then the Botslap infusion might be a solution.)

The first issue is solved by some simple edits to the /includes/comments_include.php file. I found out how to do this on a forum site. You simply need to find 3 references to

$settings['guestposts'] == “1″ and change the 1 to a 0.

What this does is allow commenting by anyone.

So near the beginning find

if ((iMEMBER || $settings['guestposts'] == “1″) && isset($_POST['post_comment'])) {

Change the “1″ to a “0″

Then find

} elseif ($settings['guestposts'] == “1″) {

Change the “1″ to a “0″

Lastly, find

if (iMEMBER || $settings['guestposts'] == “1″) {

Change the “1″ to a “0″

Next I downloaded the Comments Spam Protection mod from here

It’s simply a comments_include.php replacement. I noticed that this was for an earlier version than my PHP Fusion, and that its code was quite different from my existing comments_include.php. It seemed to work, but I decided not to risk using it and instead transferred the necessary code across to my existing comments_include.php.

I prefered my spam protection math question to be at the top rather than the bottom, so it wasn’t quite and direct transfer. Also, because of code differences, I had to add a little bit of code of my own.

First find

}
redirect($clink);
}

and change it to this (here is where you can put your own error message)

} else {
$invalid = true;
$comment_message2 = trim(stripinput(censorwords($_POST['comment_message'])));
echo “<div style=’text-align:center’><br />You must answer the maths question correctly for your comment to be added. This is to prevent bots from spamming the comments. We apologise for the inconvenience.<br /><br /></div>”;
}

if(!$invalid) redirect($clink);
}

Next find (note it’s c102, not c100)

tablebreak();
opentable($locale['c102']);

and insert the numbers generation code like this

tablebreak();

// Calculate random equation and answer
$var1 = rand(1,5);
$var2 = rand(1,5);
$equation = $var1 . ” + ” . $var2 . ” = “;
$validation_answer = $var1 + $var2;

opentable($locale['c102']);

Lastly, find this

echo “<tr>
<td align=’center’><textarea name=’comment_message’ rows=’6′ class=’textbox’ style=’width:400px’></textarea><br>

and insert the code for the input field like this

echo”<tr style=’ text-align: left; height: 25px;’>
<td>”.$equation.” <input type=’text’ name=’validation’ value=” class=’textbox’ style=’width:250px’>
<input type=’hidden’ name=’validation_answer’ value=’$validation_answer’ class=’textbox’ style=’width:250px’>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align=’center’><textarea name=’comment_message’ rows=’6′ class=’textbox’ style=’width:400px’>”;
if($invalid) echo $comment_message2; echo”</textarea><br>

That’s it. You’re good to go.