News:

Create A Forum Installed

Author Topic: [Tips] Safeguarding Your Forum  (Read 2429 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Alex

  • CAF Support Team
  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 235
  • Karma: 13
  • Gender: Male
  • Location: Greenville, North Carolina
    • View Profile

Badges: (View All)
Eighth year Anniversary Seventh year Anniversary Sixth year Anniversary
[Tips] Safeguarding Your Forum
« on: August 05, 2010, 09:28:20 pm »
Safeguarding Your Forum



Contents:

Choosing Your Staff
Permissions
Recycling
Protection From Spam




Choosing Your Staff


Staff is a very important thing. Your staff has power to moderate your forum and to make permanent decisions. With that in mind, the following tips can help you make a good decision in the case that you want to make a staff team consisting of people other than yourself
  • Don't take applications for staff, anyone can post anything on the internet without proof.
  • Do not give staff positions as a prize or to someone just because they join your forums or win a contest.
  • Give staff positions to dedicated members, chances are someone isn't going to give hours of their time into your forums and countless posts just to become a mod and destroy your forums.
  • Don't give staff to someone just because they claim to be someone else. In the event of someone claiming to be someone you know from elsewhere, contact that person on the site where you met them before giving them a staff position.
  • If you can avoid it, do not give anyone administration privileges on your forum.
  • Finally, make sure you know and trust anyone that you give a staff position to on your forum.



Permissions


Permissions are something to look at carefully. They determine who can do what on your forum. When people have more and more options, accidents can happen. for this reason, try and limit what users and/or staff on your forum can do.

  • Don't give the ability to anyone to delete accounts.
  • Don't allow members to remove/lock their posts.
  • Don't allow anyone to access bans other than the admin(s).
  • Don't allow anyone other than yourself to change permissions.



Recycling


You can protect your forum from losing it's topics. To do this we have to create a new board. Do:

Admin>Forum>Boards>Create new

Name it whatever you want.

I personally made mine Admin only, by unchecking all boxes, because this way, I am the ultimate decider in whether posts go back or not.

Now on the same area (Boards) go to settings and check "Enable recycling of deleted topics" The choose the board you just made. This will send all user deleted topics to this board, which only you/mods can view. Once again making it so you are the only one to view the board can protect all of your topics from rouge mods, because you can take the topics and move them back.



Protection From Spam


Another way your forums can be taken over is through spam. Spam is the worst, especially when it is through advertisements for products or websites through an automated message and links. It stinks. I use these measures to protect my forums.

  • Make it so members must activate their account in order to log in.
  • Do NOT allow guests to post ANYWHER unless you put them on post-moderation.
  • Make board-specific moderators if you have moderators so that they will see spam on their boards and fix it right away.
  • Require administrator approval for accounts. If a member really wants to join, they'll wait the few hours it may take for the registration to be accepted.
  • Require members with less than 10 posts to put in verification to post/send messages.
  • Make members familiar with features to get moderation attention, such as the Report to Moderator function, and the ability to PM you.


Overall, you can protect your forum. If you can handle all the work, then there isn't even a need for moderators. Follow these steps, and your forum will be secure.



Have something to add? Post here and it will be considered!
« Last Edit: August 05, 2010, 09:39:51 pm by Alex »
Terms Of Service

Please don't PM me with support questions

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter


 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
0 Replies
10124 Views
Last post March 29, 2009, 10:53:53 pm
by CreateAForum
1 Replies
705 Views
Last post July 23, 2010, 01:58:48 pm
by CreateAForum
5 Replies
1053 Views
Last post July 27, 2010, 11:40:14 pm
by clgraphics
2 Replies
1618 Views
Last post August 04, 2010, 01:32:16 pm
by lizardbitetv
1 Replies
1210 Views
Last post September 30, 2012, 06:41:00 pm
by christyne4