redsand
Forum Replies Created
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Forum: Plugins
In reply to: Contact form 7Hi Sandra,
Glad to help! 🙂
– Scott
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [Contact Form DB] Weird extra columns are added to submissions?Happy to help! 🙂
Sounds like a good solution. Yes you can safely exclude that. And yes, that’s there for anti-spam reasons.
That’s excellent there is a way to exclude fields/columns. Perhaps there could be a way to select which specific columns are included. Just a suggestion. Other plugins that deal with DB backups and searches often let you select which specific tables/columns/etc are included.
Technical note: Just for clarification, when you both mention “WPSpamShield adds a column named…” that is technically incorrect…WP-SpamShield only adds these (as “fields”) to the POST request. These get converted to database and columns by the CFDB plugin. Not trying to split hairs…just noting that for developers.
You’re welcome! 🙂
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [Contact Form DB] Weird extra columns are added to submissions?I’m the developer of WP-SpamShield, so perhaps I can help. It has anti-spam protection for Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, and a feature that protects all miscellaneous forms from spam. It adds randomly generated security keys to the POST request through a couple methods. (Keep in mind that any PHP script or WordPress plugin can add fields to the POST request.) That’s a good thing, as it’s an effective tool in stopping bots, and part of an advanced anti-spam protection layer.
@msimpson,
One suggestion: Perhaps make that a standard default to have/^[a-f0-9]{32}$/included, or detect if certain plugins are active, and then add it to the settings. If there is anything we can do to bridge compatibility, we’re happy to work with you. We have a form where other plugin developers can contact us, so feel free to get in touch.Let us know if we can help further.
– Scott
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: Contact form 7Hi @sand1000,
That’s a WP-SpamShield error message, not Contact Form 7. Hopefully I can help. 🙂
We have an FAQ and Troubleshooting step that addresses that exact issue and shows you how to fix it. It’s usually due to a installation problem, site configuration issue, plugin conflict, or JavaScript conflict.
If that doesn’t solve the problem for you, we will be happy to help you. You will need to take the following steps:
- The Troubleshooting Guide and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are the place to start.
Please take a few minutes to work through these, as they solve over 90% of issues users have. (Please be sure to follow all the steps, not just read through them.) The issue might not be what you suspect.
It is extremely rare for users to have a JavaScript and cookies error after they have worked through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs.
Once you have gone through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs, if that doesn’t solve the issue, we’ll need a bit more info from you on the specifics, and we’ll need to email back and forth, so you should move on to the next step.
- Submit a support request using the secure form at the WP-SpamShield Support page, our main support channel for the plugin. We have an excellent diagnostic process.
That will allow us to help you diagnose this, find out what the real issue is, and get things working right for you.
– Scott
Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues. Please direct any further support questions there.
Forum: Reviews
In reply to: [RS Head Cleaner Plus] Website no longer worksHi @pc1271,
We’ll be happy to help!
We have a WordPress Debugging Guide that you will want to take a look at.
If you head over to our WordPress Plugin Support page, we’ll help you get things working. 🙂
– Scott
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [WP-SpamShield] Possible to remove php @session_start()?Hi Jeff,
Removing @session_start() by itself won’t speed up sites. Even disabling PHP sessions altogether by itself won’t speed up sites. Unfortunately there is a lot of bad info floating around that promotes disabling sessions. It’s simply not necessary. There is a workaround for literally every reason people can provide as to why they think sessions should not be used. We’ve worked with all manner or caching systems, and provided advice to web hosting companies on improving their performance. This is one of our areas of expertise.
Sessions are an important element of PHP and provide functionality to store data about a specific user currently visiting the site. We use sessions for security, not to speed sites up, but the way we implement it, it also doesn’t slow them down.
As I mentioned:
Just a note: If you’re having a specific problem, it’s more helpful to plugin developers if you can ask for help solving a specific issue, instead of asking us to remove a section of code…you may not fully realize the functionality that requires it, or what would be lost by removing it.
So, no we’re not going to remove it.
I did mention Compatibility Mode which does modify its session usage. If it wasn’t clear how that changes the session functionality, or you need help solving a specific issue, I’ll be happy to explain the specifics if you submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support Form.
As noted:
Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues. Please direct any further support questions there.
– Scott
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [WP-SpamShield] Possible to remove php @session_start()?Hi @jeffmcneill,
Clients hire us day in and day out to optimize their sites, and we write plugins that help improve PageSpeed, so that’s one area we specialize in and would never let a plugin slow a site down.
You’re looking at one element of site speed and scalability, but we’re actually way ahead of you. 🙂
That is there for a very specific reason, and the way that we’ve implemented it, does not hinder site speed. We manage and support many high performance sites, and all of them have PHP sessions enabled, and outperform comparable sites that don’t have sessions enabled.
We’ve actually already got an FAQ that covers how the plugin is optimized, in depth. Please take a look at that.
When the plugin detects a situation where it needs to, it will switch to Compatibility Mode, which modifies how it works with PHP Sessions, along with some other optimizations and method changes. You can manually force it to run in Compatibility Mode if you like.
I would recommend becoming familiar with the plugin documentation for more info.
Just a note: If you’re having a specific problem, it’s more helpful to plugin developers if you can ask for help solving a specific issue, instead of asking us to remove a section of code…you may not fully realize the functionality that requires it, or what would be lost by removing it.
So, if you are having any specific issues, we’ll be happy to help further.
You will need to take the following steps:
- The Troubleshooting Guide and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are the place to start.
Please take a few minutes to work through these, as they solve over 90% of issues users have. (Please be sure to follow all the steps, not just read through them.) The issue might not be what you suspect.
Once you have gone through the Troubleshooting Guide and FAQs, if that doesn’t solve the issue, we’ll need a bit more info from you on the specifics, and we’ll need to email back and forth, so you should move on to the next step.
- Submit a support request using the secure form at the WP-SpamShield Support page, our main support channel for the plugin. We have an excellent diagnostic process.
– Scott
Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues. Please direct any further support questions there.
- This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by redsand.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [WP-SpamShield] With Google AnalyticsHi @cuta,
What you’re talking about is analytics referrer spam. That’s something different. WP-SpamShield blocks spam that is sent to your site via POST requests: Comments, Contact Forms, User Registrations, Pingbacks/Trackbacks, and just about every other type of form.
Referrer spam bots can be blocked in your
.htaccessfile without even using a plugin.Here is a good tutorial. You can Google to find others.
Hope that helps!
– Scott
Hi Adam,
I am really sorry that you had an initial frustrating experience, and I appreciate that you’re giving us another chance to show you who we are, and that we are here to help.
I have seen elsewhere that this one hell of a good product.
After an initial poor rating by myself, due to frustration, the developer interjected immediately to offer any help possible.
I figured out what was causing an issue that the plugin didn’t like and because I want to keep using the product, I found a way to work around this – actually now for the better!
Thanks Scott and apologies for the initial hiccup.
Wow, I was definitely not expecting this updated review. Thank you so much for the revised review. That really means a lot.
No worries at all…believe me, I know exactly how frustrating it can be to deal with tech support, and how frustrating it can be to have an issue that just doesn’t seem to go away. We’re really working hard to do tech support differently. 🙂
I sent you an email. (Let me know if you don’t receive it.) We will help you get this issue fixed as quickly as possible.
– Scott
This review is certainly not unfounded.
I’m not sure how you can stand by that statement. You are certainly entitled to your opinion.
You didn’t even give us a chance to help you. You did not submit a support request in the support forum here on WordPress . org. (You could have done this if you had an issue with the main support site.) When you had an issue on the support site, you posted a negative review within a few hours, on a major holiday here, so we literally did not even have a chance to help you. If you had given us a little time, you would have heard from us shortly. As, I mentioned, humans review the logs of blocked requests, and will reach out. Hardly any other company does this.
Do you expect that you are going to get positive reviews when your own support site does not work.
I didn’t ask you to give the plugin a 5-star review…I pointed out the the decent thing to do is give us a chance to help you before posting a negative review.
Adam, I located the log of your support request and was planning on reaching out to you in the morning.
The support site definitely works. We test it regularly. Other users submitted support requests successfully in between your 2 attempts.
Possibly your time could be better spent sorting out your own website so that support issues are made easy and not so difficult as to annoy users, instead of defending valid reviews that inform users correctly.
Our website works quite well, and we test regularly to ensure that everything is up and running. We the site monitored externally, and internally have diagnostic scripts running around the clock. Admins get alerted to errors within a few minutes. When it comes to keeping the site working smoothly, we go above and beyond.
You asked me not to defend our work, and my position that your review was patently undeserved? We have the right to defend our work. We spend a ton of time doing this for free, trying to help people. And we have developed one of the best anti-spam plugins out there. I will absolutely defend our work, and our work ethic. No one can ask my not to do that.
…as you state on your website, you are not that keen to provide support for a free product.
I’m not sure where you got that idea, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Read the other user reviews, and see the resolved support forum threads, and you can see that anyone who has requested help from us has gotten excellent support. We do ask users to try to help themselves first, before submitting a support request, but once they submit a support request, we bend over backwards to help.
Please ask yourself this…When developers spend so much time developing free plugins for the WordPress community, is it really ok to post a 1-star review without giving the developer a chance to help you? That’s simply not the right way to handle things.
If you have an issue with something, submit a support request first, and give the author time to respond. We provide free support for our plugins…all you have to do is submit a support request at the WP-SpamShield Support Page. (If you have an issue there, then simply submit a request at the WordPress.org support forum. There is no need to spend hours on that. You can try those and be done within ten minutes.) We provide some of the best support out there.
You might want to take a moment to check out these two posts:
I would still ask that you reconsider your rating, as it simply isn’t accurate or fair. It can be updated by going to: https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/wp-spamshield#postform
Reviews like this simply do not help the global WordPress community.
– Scott
Pity I can’t give a half star!
After login / register form not working, I tried to contact support (after reading troubleshooting and FAQs). I installed the diagnostic. Spent over 2 hours trying to get a support ticket through on 2 different browsers with javascript and cookies enabled. But on submission of the form I kept getting “enable javascript and Cookies” In another review here, you complained about someone not requesting support before giving a negative rating but it is impossible to request support! Get you act together man!!!!!!!!!!I’m sorry to hear that you had an issue, but this is an unfounded review.
If you had issues with the form on our site, you could have posted a support request here on the forums (which you did not), and we would have gotten back to you. If you notice, we have responded to every single support request here on the forums, and resolved it. Your claim of “No Support” is simply unfounded.
Additionally, you might have noticed that today is one of our biggest national holidays here in the U.S. — Thanksgiving. No one is working today. We are spending time with family and friends.
You need to give people adequate time to respond, and not lash out like this. You posted this review within a few hours of your issue. You need to give plugin developers 48 hours to respond at the very least.
When a user submits a form on our site, if it gets blocked, all data is logged, and within a short period of time reviewed by a human. If it is determined that someone had an issue, we will reach out to them. You haven’t given us time to do this. You would have heard from us by tomorrow. As it is I will reach out to you personally…but please be patient. I guarantee you that no other plugin developer does this. (If they do, then kudos.)
Spent over 2 hours trying to get a support ticket through on 2 different browsers with javascript and cookies enabled. But on submission of the form I kept getting “enable javascript and Cookies”
Have you checked your browser extensions/plugins to make sure that they are not interfering with JavaScript functionality?
Have you tried clearing your browser cache and cookies?
Have you tried using a different browser?
When users make claims about a website not working, they often don’t realize that they have implemented something that is making websites break.
Get you act together man!!!!!!!!!!
This is one of the highest rated anti-spam plugins for WordPress. Our act is together. We work hard to provide a quality, leading edge anti-spam plugin, for free.
Your review is unfounded. This type of review only does harm to the worldwide WordPress community.
I would ask that you thoughtfully consider revising your review after we have had a chance to reach out to you, as this is neither accurate nor fair.
– Scott
- This reply was modified 9 years, 6 months ago by redsand.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [WP-SpamShield] Not Installed CorrectlyHi Rodrigo,
I looked into this and examined our error logs. I was able to isolate the incident in question.
Unfortunately I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our records/logs indicate malicious behavior coming from that IP address. You may or may not be aware of it. (I’m guessing most likely you were not aware of it.) For your security I’m not going to go into further detail on an online forum. You should do a deeper security audit of your computer/network.
I would recommend installing BitDefender or another top security+anti-virus/anti-malware on your system, and running a thorough scan. Also, and this is even more important…if you are using an expired operating system that is no longer supported by the manufacturer, you should upgrade to a modern operating system as soon as possible. Windows XP is an example of an outdated OS, and it has numerous security vulnerabilities that cannot be fixed by using security software. Microsoft stopped supporting it a couple years ago, which means no more security updates. It was released over 15 years ago and is a security nightmare for folks. Simply running an anti-virus/anti-malware won’t do much to protect you, because of the plethora of security holes that aren’t patched, and won’t be patched. Malware can run completely undetected on systems like this.
Once you address the security issue, you should be able to access the site.
– Scott
- This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by redsand.
Forum: Fixing WordPress
In reply to: How do I let people Register and post@exchange Thanks for recommending WP-SpamShield! 🙂 Just to give you a heads up, it actually does work on multisite. It just needs to be activated per site, not network activated.
@exchange and @blackhawk362016: Let us know if we can be of any help. 🙂
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [WP-SpamShield] Won’t work with formidible formsHi @nootkan,
As noted above:
Please note that the WP-SpamShield Support page is our main support venue, not the WordPress forums here, so that will always be the best way to get a quick response and resolve any tech support issues.
We’ll be happy to help, but the only way for us to look into it further is for you to submit a support request there. Please direct all further requests there.
- This reply was modified 9 years, 7 months ago by redsand.
Forum: Plugins
In reply to: [Maintenance] Cannot LoginPerhaps I can help. (I’m the developer of WP-SpamShield) This has been listed on our known issues page for some time: https://www.redsandmarketing.com/plugins/wp-spamshield/known-conflicts/
Maintenance alters the WordPress login process. Hooks from the standard WordPress login page process are missing in the Maintenance plugin. WP-SpamShield (like other plugins) depends on these to check if it’s on a login/registration page, add code to the login page in order to validate, etc. This would affect compatibility of many plugins, not just WP-SpamShield. Keep in mind that WordPress login & registration process are somewhat tied together so some of the hooks affect each other.
@ar7:
As of right now, to use these plugins together, be sure that you check the option for “Disable anti-spam for miscellaneous forms” in the WP-SpamShield settings.@fruitfulcode:
If you make sure it has all of the standard hooks that fire throughout the login process, it will help fix this issue. (For example, WP-SpamShield looks for ‘login_init’, ‘login_head’ hooks to detect login pages with non-standard names, to make sure it doesn’t run the Miscellaneous Form Anti-Spam check on login pages.) Otherwise the plugins will remain in conflict. If you would like to contact us to work on bridging compatibility gaps, we’ll be happy to help. - The Troubleshooting Guide and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) are the place to start.