Help with guestbook spamming

[dcjones]

Hi All,

Sometime ago I produced a web site for a drug and alcohol rehab unit based in the UK.

We recently added a guestbook which was written using php with an SQL database.

Over the last 2 weeks there has been a large number of enteries placed in the guestbook from sources with not so great comments.

The guestbook itself has 3 feilds, name, email address and comment. The email addesss is required to make an entry but is not displayed when viewing the guestbook itself.

My question is, what is the best way of trying to stop this happening.

Any help would be good.

[NogDog]

Using some sort of "captcha" validation will help stop any automated 'bots. See http://bokehman.com/captcha_verification for one way of doing it.

[dcjones]

Hi and many thanks for your reply.

Having some problems intgrating the script into my form, help please if you can.

Atthe top of my page I have:

<?php // The following three lines must be at the top of  your script. 
session_start();
define('CAPTCHA_PATH', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/captcha/'); // Path to captcha
require_once(CAPTCHA_PATH.'captcha.php');
?>	

some mor html and then the form.

<form action="<?php $captcha = captcha_validate();?> <?php echo $editFormAction; ?>" method="post" name="form2" id="form2">
                              <table align="center">
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td width="67" align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext">Id:</td>
                                  <td width="277" colspan="2" class="chargesformtext"><input type="text" name="id" value="" size="32" /></td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext"><div align="right">Name:</div></td>
                                  <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext"><input type="text" name="name" value="" size="32" /></td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext"><div align="right">Date:</div></td>
                                  <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext"><input name="inputdate" type="text" value="<?php echo date("F d,Y", $now) ?>" size="32" /></td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext"><div align="right">Comment:</div></td>
                                  <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext"><input type="text" name="comment" value="" size="32" /></td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext"><div align="right">Email:</div></td>
                                  <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext"><input type="text" name="email" value="" size="32" /></td>
                                </tr>
                                <tr valign="baseline">
                                  <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext">&nbsp;</td>
                                  <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext">&nbsp;</td>
                                </tr>


                            <tr valign="baseline">
                              <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext">&nbsp;</td>
                              <td colspan="2" class="chargesformtext">Please enter the code below into the text feild. </td>
                            </tr>
                            <tr valign="baseline">
                              <td align="right" nowrap="nowrap" class="bodytext"><div align="right"></div></td>
                              <td colspan="2">
<?php if(isset($_POST['captcha'])){
	if(captcha_validate()){
		print '<p>Success! <br>You entered the correct code! <br><a href="http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'">Here\'s another one to try!</a></p>';
	}else{
		print '<p>Failure! <br>You entered the wrong code! <br><a href="http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'">Here\'s another one to try!</a></p>';
	}
}else{
print   '<div style="float: left;"><img id="mainimage" style="border: 1px solid #555;" src="http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].
		$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?image" width="140" height="90" alt="CAPTCHA image">'."\n".
        '<br>I can\'t read that image...<br>'."\n".
        '<a href="#" onclick="document.getElementById(\'mainimage\').src=\'http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'?image=\' + new Date; return false;">give me an easier one!</a>'."\n".
        '</div><form style="margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 3px;" action="http://'.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].$_SERVER['PHP_SELF'].'" method="post">'."\n".
        '<input type="text" name="captcha" style="width: 100px; height: 24px; margin-top: 5px; border: 1px solid #555; margin-left: 10px; text-align: center;">'."\n".
        '<span style="color: red;">*</span> <i>case sensitive</i><br>'."\n".
        '<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" style="width: 100px; height: 24px; margin-left: 10px; margin-top: 5px;">'."\n".
        '</form><br><br><br><br>'."\n";

}
?></td>
                                </tr>
                              </table>
                            <input type="hidden" name="MM_insert" value="form2" />


                        </form>

I have <?php $captcha = captcha_validate();?> in my form action and the other parts towards the end of the form.

Can you advise and help me.