wp-captcha 1.0 Captcha System for WordPress Mu

Posted on | noviembre 21, 2007 | 18 Comments

Introduction:

As many of you know, WordPress®launched some time ago their system WordPress MU (WordPress Multi User). This system is an altered version of the original WordPress system, which allows you to create a website in which you may host “countless” Users and each one of them may have one or more WordPress Blogs independent one from the other. As an example you may visit EterBlogsThe system allows any person to register and create one or more users and at the same time one or more Blogs per user, the problem is that the registration system does not have any type of CAPTCHA* checking, therefore, allowing any Robot (Boot, Spider or as you wish to call it) may enter your page and create Users and Blogs-Spamers. This lack of protection can cause many problems, since you will have hundreds or even thousands of Blogs making publicity (spam) in your wordpress system.

Examples of Catpchas

The amount of companies (specially chinese and northamerican) dedicated to this type of illegal publicity are too many and it seems they are growing every day creating new and more sophisticated robot systems that register blogs in public sites, and which makes more difficult and tedious the task of managing and maintaining a site created with WordPress MU.The problem is not only having to manually eliminate or label these Blogs as spam or Users as spammers, since, if we wish we can just leave them there, but the increasement of resources in the server could become quite worryngly, since the size of your database will sep growing enormously and exponentially, the amount of consultation to the database MySQL will also get increased and obviously the space of your hard disk, the use of the Microprocesor and of course the bandwith consumed by these trash blogs.

The solution:

Integrate a Captcha* system is practically the perfect solution. The problem is that WordPress does not integrate this system to its free version of WordPress MU, in fact, not even in their official system in wordpress.com. So, after looking for some plugin or hack that would incorporate a captcha in wordpress mu and not finding any solution, I decided to program my own script captcha and some hacks for EterBlogs and make it available to those who would like to integrate it to their wordpress sites; it is worth mentioning that this script may be used in any other web system. The name of the script is wp-captcha, since it was originally griten for WordPress MU and since the system may be integrated in any type of webpage, be it a CMS, Script or Plugin that uses a formulary; I decided to keep the name but referring to Widespread Public – Captcha

Installing:

From the shell

1.- Enter the root directory of your WordPress MU
2.- Download wp-captcha
# wget http://digitalsoftproject.com/software/wp-captcha/wp-captcha_01.zip
3.- Decompress the file wp-catpcha.zip
#unzip wp-captcha
4.- Enter the folder wp-captcha and move the files wp-captcha.php, wp-captcha.jpg and VeraMoBd.ttf to the root of your wordpress and if you want to eliminate the directory wp-captcha and the file wp-captcha.zip
# cd wp-captcha
# mv wp-captcha.* ../
# mv VeraMoBd.ttf ../
# cd ..
# rm -fr wp-captcha
# rm -f wp-captcha.zip5.- Edit with nano vi or your favorite editor the files wp-signup.php, wp-includes/wpmu-functions.php y wp-activate.php as indicated in file wpmu-captcha-english-README.TXT

Via FTP

1.- Download wp-captcha from here
2.- Decompress the file wp-captcha.zip
3.- Copy files wp-captcha.php and wp-captcha.jpg and VeraMoBd.ttf to the root directory of your WordPress MU
4.- Edit files wp-signup.php, wp-includes/wpmu-functions.php and wp-activate.php as indicated by the file wpmu-captcha-english-README.TXT

Licence:
wp-captcha is a free software and is distributed under license GPL (General Public License)Suggestions:
Cany sugestión comment, critics, etc. may be made here or sent by e.mail to oscar.rovira@gmail.com
Donations:
If you like this script and has been useful to you, you may make a contribution through paypal, account oscar@digitalsoftproject.com
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=oscar%2erovira%40gmail%2ecom&item_name=wp%2dcaptcha&no_shipping=0&no_note=1&tax=0¤cy_code=USD&lc=MX&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

*Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (Prueba de Turing pública y automática para diferenciar a máquinas y humanos).

Category: Sin categoría

Comments

18 Responses to “wp-captcha 1.0 Captcha System for WordPress Mu”

Éter Blog » wp-captcha 1.0 Sistema Captcha para WordPress MU
noviembre 21st, 2007 @ 11:29 PM

[...] wp-captcha English Version [...]
wp-captcha 1.0 Sistema Captcha para WordPress MU | Ko(onem
noviembre 22nd, 2007 @ 12:02 AM

[...] wp-captcha English Version [...]
Warrior
noviembre 26th, 2007 @ 4:00 PM

Thanks! good job!
Oscar Rovira
noviembre 26th, 2007 @ 4:04 PM

thanks Warrior.. meabe you can help me to translate this info tu Itialian language.
nethanel
noviembre 27th, 2007 @ 7:33 AM

I have a bug

look at http://kaveret.org/wp-signup.php
Oscar Rovira
noviembre 27th, 2007 @ 3:56 PM

Hi nethanel, you ara not using my wp-captcha. the link for your captcha is http://kaveret.org/wp-captcha.php?rand=756635, my captcha use http://eterblogs.com/wp-captcha.php?p=1. do you see?.. the rand variable in your captcha script and the p variable in my captcha script.

Please download mi wp-captcha and fllow the instructions.
koparka
noviembre 30th, 2007 @ 2:35 AM

Thanks for very interesting article.
Russ
diciembre 17th, 2007 @ 10:38 AM

Hi,

Thanks for the great CAPTCHA program. One thing I’m noticing on my installation is when a user submits the form *without* the required fields, the URL of the returned page with errors highlighted tacks on an extra ‘wp-signup.php’ to the end of it. So, instead of returning:

http://keeneweb.org/wp-signup.php/

it returns…

http://keeneweb.org/wp-signup.php/wp-signup.php

I appreciate any suggestion.

Thanks!!!
Russ
Chris
enero 21st, 2008 @ 9:48 PM

Hello! I am trying to use your captcha and when following the directions, i find that the image does not show on the signup page. How to correct this?
Pawel
febrero 15th, 2008 @ 9:55 AM

Has anyone prepared all the chenged files: wp-signup.php, wp-includes/wpmu-functions.php y wp-activate.php?

I tried to do this and I almost succeeded, but still not. There is something wrong in my files. Can anyone send me changed files?
Aka
marzo 5th, 2008 @ 1:51 AM

Thanks for a great script. But it might not work if you’re using PHP > 5.0.0 – the picture won’t be showing.
So as to get it to work, in ‘wp-captcha.php’ change the second code line from:

if ($HTTP_GET_VARS["p"]){

to:

if ($_GET["p"]){

To Oscar: could you change the source itself? As since php5 variable HTTP_GET_VARS is depreciated; _GET was introducted in php4.1 and don’t thnink if someone is using previous versions of php.
Aka
marzo 26th, 2008 @ 6:57 PM

I forgot to mention, that it’s not working for me.
At final step it’s redirecting me to the beginning of installation, so gave up on this hack.
Instead using WPMU Captcha (but visually preferred this one, pity)
Polly Stewart
mayo 11th, 2008 @ 1:05 PM

5 minutes to setup and running perfect on new install of WP MU. Thanks!
Typolight
septiembre 6th, 2008 @ 9:43 AM

Thanks, you nice post that helped me alot.
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abril 6th, 2009 @ 3:23 PM

Niiice post thanks so much for this useful info ! not always we can see like this
How to Get Six Pack Fast
abril 15th, 2009 @ 12:04 PM

Not that I’m totally impressed, but this is a lot more than I expected for when I stumpled upon a link on Delicious telling that the info is quite decent. Thanks.
phil taylor
julio 5th, 2009 @ 1:18 PM

Your wp-captcha 1.0 Captcha System for WordPress Mu will not work with the current version of wordpress-mu. The modificiations that you provided in the docs does not match the current version on the wp-signup.php.
oscar rovira
febrero 24th, 2011 @ 7:46 PM

Thanks Phil is a verry old version and i am not current working in.