Forum Spam and Broken Search

CAPTCHA helped reduce the obvious bot traffic on a site I worked on, but it also annoyed real users and didn’t stop scripted signups for long. We had better results combining rate limits, email verification, honeypots, and reviewing device or session patterns before blocking anyone. For repeated promo or account abuse, Shield Labs looks useful because it can score suspicious visitors instead of treating every shared IP as guilty. Search is a separate issue too; Google can help, but fixing indexing, relevance, and stale results first usually matters more than swapping the search box.

https://backpackinglight.com/search/

I think you will find our site search is working very well these days.

Matt, search is indeed MUCH IMPROVED bravo!

I see very little spam. Even at the low admission price, it doesn’t go to far. I think most spammers would find it a waste of money. That’s why I don’t mind paying it.

@dirtnap – Glad you like it!

Yes we get an occasional spammer/scammer but it doesn’t seem to be a big deal these days.

Seems this is a resurrected 15 year old post?

epic thread bump :)

I see no spam, search works great. Just wish forum content was wider than 40% of screen real estate.

I’m going to close this topic because the overall consensus seems to be positive toward our Search.

Brad, your preference regarding the column width in the forums has been heard. I will advocate for it to get a little bit wider when appropriate.

I have taught design as my full-time job for 2.5 decades and hold degrees in the field. Very wide columns are generally considered poor typography because they make sustained reading more difficult; people’s eyes can get lost traveling back and forth across long lines of text. I understand that you prefer a much wider column, and you are absolutely allowed to have that preference, but it is outside what is typically considered best practice for readability.

I do agree that the columns could be a little wider on desktop.

Also, if you have your text size or browser zoom set to something other than 100%, that can produce different effects in different browsers, so you might try checking that.

Please PM me if you want to discuss it further.