How to create a decoy signup site to stop spam bots:
1. The best way to do this is by using a sub domain so you won't mix your decoy site with your main site.You can create a sub domain (www.signup.yoursite.com) in your host cpanel. After your sub domain is created you need to install a fresh copy of e107 on this sub domain. Alot of hosts offer e107 already and if so it's best to use their install process and choose your sub domain for the location, if not download, unzip, upload and install e107 in the location of your sub domain just like you did your main site or any other e107 install.
2. Now after you have e107 installed on your sub domain, you need to set the site settings (website name, tag, description, email, etc..) to exactly match your main website except the site url. Copy the theme your using on your main site to your decoy site and set it as your site theme so that it looks just like your main site. Disable any menus that are active, delete and news posts like the default one, turn off comments and posting (preferences, comments/posting), and restrict this site to members only(preferences user registration/posting). It's good to have just 1 link on the decoy site to say "Home" that goes to your main site homepage and create a redirect to make your decoy site point to your main site by adding a redirect code directly to both the index.php file and news.php. To add the redirect, edit the index.php and news.php files, delete all the contents of these files and add the following:
This should be the only thing in theses files, make sure the address points to your maon site, then save them. Now anyone that tries to access your decoy site directly will be sent to your main site.
3. Ok your decoy site is pretty much ready to go so now you need to allow your main site to connect to it. Install the core Alternate Authentication plugin (plugin manager,click install) on your main site (not the decoy). After you install this plugin click the Alternate Authentication plugin icon in your e107 admin area and adjust the prefferences section as seen below:
Current authorization type: otherdb
Failed connection action: If connection to the alternate method fails, how should that be handled? Use e107 user table
User not found action: If username is not found using alternate method, how should that be handled? Use e107 user table
4. Then click update to save these settings. Then click Configure [otherdb] on the side menu. Now the information needed for this section can be found in the e107_config.php file on your decoy site. Use the databse, username, password, etc... listed inside this file to allow your main site to connect to the decoy:
Database Type: mysql - e107 database Server: localhost Username: username listed in e107_config.php Password: password listed in e107_config.php Database: name of the database the decoy site uses Table: e107_user (unless you specified a different database prefix on install, if so this will be different) ** The following fields are not required if using an e107 database Username Field: blank Password Field: blank Password Method: md5
5. Now click update and your main site should now be connected to your decoy site if information is correct. Any registration done on the decoy site can be used to login on your main site. Now you need to redirect your signup page to point to your decoy site's signup page. This can be done 2 ways, either in your host cpanel under redirects, tell it to send all requests from yoursite.com/signup.php to signup.yoursite.com/signup.php and anyone that goes to your signup page will be redirected to your decoy signup page, or you can empty the contents of your main site's signup.php and manually add a redirection code to your decoy site's signup.php file as listed above. Once the redirect is in place you can disable registration on your main site (preferences, User Registration/Posting).
Now when a user clicks signup or register on your main site they go to your decoy site signup page and if your theme matches, website name, etc.., then only way to really notice any difference is if you look at the address bar, it should show signup.yoursite.com/signup.php instead of yoursite.com/signup.php and once the user registers (if email verifacation is used the email link will go to the decoy site and verify the email like it should) they can then click home in your links to go to your main site homepage and login with the information they used to signup with.
now you can stop there if you like cause if you test the signup and login and it works like it should then you did it! however, if you wish to cleanup all the excess files from the decoy site to save space then you can delete all plugins on your decoy site, all themes except the 2 in use (admin theme and website theme), and you can also delete several other files like the download.php, banner.php, contact.php, and any other files not used (make sure you leave the .htaccess, class2.php, error pages, e107_config.php, and index.php files), if you are unsure about a file the leave it or delete them 1 at a time and test the decoy site after each file you delete to make sure it still works if not reupload the file(should always make backups)
Welcome Guest,
however, if you wish to cleanup all the excess files from the decoy site to save space then you can delete all plugins on your decoy site, all themes except the 2 in use (admin theme and website theme), and you can also delete several other files like the download.php, banner.php, contact.php, and any other files not used (make sure you leave the .htaccess, class2.php, error pages, e107_config.php, and index.php files), if you are unsure about a file the leave it or delete them 1 at a time and test the decoy site after each file you delete to make sure it still works if not reupload the file(should always make backups)
