Yes, it's true... Hope lives on...

A quick disclaimer before moving on, this is not an "official" BoardMod "mod", but I nevertheless hope that this is the appropriate board to be posting this on.  I apologize if I've biffed.  After years of you all's helping me, I'm relishing this opportunity to give back a little something,... moreover, to the old-school YaBBers using a highly "customized" version of YaBB 1... that doesn't lend itself to the standard upgrades, at least not at this point.

So, moving right along,... I busted some hump with a fine chap over at Bumblebeeware.com, Mark, who, in all honesty, did most of the bustin', on getting his "CAPTCHA for Perl" integrated into the registration page of my YaBB 1 Gold - SP 1.1 forum,... and we succeeded.

It's actually a fairly painless mod that can easily be manually installed.  (Although, if the BoardMod guys here want to make this an official BoardMod "mod", that would be fine.) So, let's get to it...

Attached hereto is a file "Register.pl.zip".  In it is a file "Register.pl.htm".  View it in your browser.  As you scroll down, what is in red, bold font is the modifications/additions that need to be made in the "Register.pl" file.  (What's in regular black font is the rest, which includes a BoardMod "mod" or two, for which you'd want to account.)  "Register.pl" is the ONLY YaBB file you need to modify.

From there, go ahead and get yourself "CAPTCHA for Perl" over at Bumblebeeware.com.  Here's the link:  http://www.bumblebeeware.com/captcha/.  Just one note, to use it for YaBB registration, you have to put it in the same directory as "Register.pl", i.e. the "Sources" directory.  Point being, you'll be ditching the "captcha" directory in the "CAPTCHA for Perl" instructions.  Also,... MORE GREAT NEWS,... NO Perl Modules or Libraries are required!!!

That's really it!!!  To see it in action, drop on by:  http://www.fantasyfootballer.com/cgi-bin/theGridiron/YaBB.cgi?board=;action=regi....

I'd be honored to help folks get this working.  I'm sure Mark over at Bumblebeeware.com would be too, but I'd like to save him some work by acting as the first line of support here.

(Just to note it, my main "original", albeit miniscule, contribution to this is the implementation of the javascript "refresh" code in the "captchaerror" and "captchanofile" sub-routines, which brings the user back to the registration page automatically.  This is actually a bit crucial as the CAPTCHA image MUST be refreshed and using the back button doesn't always get it done.)

One final peripherally related note, I am employing "CAPTCHA for Perl" ALONG WITH Andy Murdoch's decoy bot-filter "trick":  http://www.yabbforum.com/community/YaBB.pl?num=1149617510.  This also works like a charm.  The way I see it, each of these methods, "CAPTCHA for Perl" and Andy's decoy trick, will not just protect my forum, but also help conceal one another.  You can NEVER have too much protection against (Russian) spambots!!!

Well, have a GREAT weekend, my fellow old-school YaBBers!!! 8)

StegRock wrote on Aug 24^th, 2007 at 3:12am:


Just a heads up... for those of you trying to add this feature to your forum...  The thread above no longer exists. It is one less resource for us to work with as it was unfortunately "kleened".

Squirrelman,...

Hey thanks so much for making this! I'm having trouble downloading the .zip you attached. Its returning a server 500 error 

Maybe you could pm it to me or host a link to it somewhere else? Thanks!!

I know this is a bit late here.. but will this work for YaBB SP 1.4 ?

I have no idea myself I'm afraid. To be honest, I think you're going to struggle to find anyone who knows a lot about these old Mods - The only thing I could suggest is to try it, but I don't think that a 1.1 Mod will work with 1.4, no.

Sorry if that's not much help.

Again, I personally have no idea about these old Mods, and I think you're going to find it hard to find anyone who does. Most of these old Mod writers aren't around anymore, so you're not likely to get support for them - sorry!

L_ith wrote on May 5^th, 2010 at 3:32am:

Well, if it's under the 1/1.1 boards then I should imagine it works with 1/1.1. As I say though, you could always try it.

L_ith wrote on May 5^th, 2010 at 3:32am:

I have never used it myself, but from having a quick read, it seems to be third party software and is a few years old, so I would personally be cautious of how well it works.

L_ith wrote on May 5^th, 2010 at 3:32am:

Well, there was some security issues with 2.1, so I should imagine there was some security holes in the YaBB 1 releases too.

I know you've probably heard this before and probably don't want to hear it again, but I could only recommend that you upgrade to 2.4.

Sorry again if that's not much help, but you really should consider an upgrade.

No problem.