tarma said
I would like to suggest some features to prevent spam better. – I would like to review forum posts first that contain a link or email address. Currently I can only find an option for 2 or more links, not only 1 or for email etc.

I would recommend using the SP Admin Bar plugin that when active and in use will allow you to very quickly check all posts in one place and allow you to approve, delete and even reply without loading the topic. You can also, using the Admin Bar, optionally turn on the use of Akismet.

PM limiter: In the PM plugin it would be nice to only allow users to send PM’s after they made xx posts on the public forum. I have seen a few times that a users registers and immediately begins sending 20+ pm’s with spam. I could create a separate group and move users between, but that wouldn’t be very admin friendly.

You could accomplish this easily through the forum ranking system. Have all new members go initially into a user group that has no access to PM (and optionally other features too). Then set the ranking system to your 20 posts upon which they can then be automatically moved to a user group with PM turned on. Once set up it is automatic.

Flood control: I would like to enable flood control for new topics so that users only can post 1 time in 30 seconds or 1 minute or so. I have seen users registering and immediately copy paste topics on each forum. Creating 20+ new topics in a few minutes.

I long ago accepted that I will ever really fully understand the mentality of some people! I can certainly add this to the user request list for consideration although surely all it will really do is slow them up – not stop them?

Content check: Check if a message is the same or almost the same to prevent cross posting and then put it in moderation first.

There is code that checks whether a message is the same as the last post by the user. Are you suggesting this is not working? However ‘almost the same‘ is a different issue. If you know of a good way of programmatically and efficiently doing that then I am all ears.

Review first post: Maybe it’s a good idea to always check a new users post. Just like the WordPress settings. Only moderate first (or first 2 / 3) post of a user. After that the user can always post normally.

This facility already exists. Please see the moderation article in the How To FAQ on our codex for information.

I think a lot of admins will be happy to see one or more of these options so we can sleep better

You could accomplish this easily through the forum ranking system. Have all new members go initially into a user group that has no access to PM (and optionally other features too). Then set the ranking system to your 20 posts upon which they can then be automatically moved to a user group with PM turned on. Once set up it is automatic.

I have tried this, but can’t get it set up properly…

I created a user group called “New Members” and added the “Limited Access” permission set to it (Cannot use PM and post are moderated).

I created a forum rank called “New Member” and set “# Posts For Rank” to “5”. And also set Automatic User Group Membership to “New Members”.

The second rank I created is “Member” and set “# Posts For Rank” to “1000”. And also set Automatic User Group Membership to “Members”.

Finally I did “Map Users to User Group” to add all users to the right group. The problem is that the rank is correctly set (“New Member rank or Member rank based on post count”), but the group (Memberships) of the user is always “New Members” even if the user has more than 5 posts.

You have missed the point of the rankings. The user group you specify against each rank is the user group the user is moved INTO once they hit the post count. You have set it to the one they are already a member of.

Until 5 posts they are “New Member” and after 5 posts they become “Member”. Did I set it wrong?

Yes. As I already said. The way you have it here is that after they make 4 posts they become a ‘New member’ They will not become a ‘member’ until 1000 posts have been made.
You want them to become a ‘member’ after 4 posts.

Well I really cannot update all my current members to the right group and right rank according to their post count. How can I achieve this step by step?

The “Up to x Posts” should be named “After x Posts” I guess? Since it’s not the user rank “until” post count is made.

My settings are like this but when I process “Map Users to User Group”, it’s not right again… :/ It’s really not clear for me how it works..

you can either change the criteria for which rank one gets… or update the posts counts for users in the db to get the desired rank…

map users to user group has nothing to do with forum ranks…  that assigns a user to a specific sp usergroup based on their wp role… again, nothing to do with ranks…

I needed to map users because I had members both in the “New Members” group and in the “Members” group. I guess the Forum Rank adds a user to a group after 4 posts, but keeps also him in the old group (new members).

Do you have ‘Users are limited to single usergroup membership’ turned off? (In the map users admin panel)

Yellow Swordfish said
Do you have ‘Users are limited to single usergroup membership’ turned off? (In the map users admin panel)

Ah yes, looked over this option, it’s off by default then. I guess this should be turned on.

depends on the specific use case of the site… but in your case, sounds like potentially so…