StopForumSpam + Sngine: How Our Integration Smacks Down Bot Signups

Spam signups, garbage comments, shady IPs… not on our watch. If you’re running Sngine and you’re tired of bots waltzing in like they own the place, our StopForumSpam integration is the bouncer you’ve been praying for. It quietly checks new accounts against a massive, constantly updated spammer database—then blocks, flags, or throttles them before they can sneeze out a single junk link.

Ready to make spam cry? Grab the add-on here

What Is StopForumSpam (SFS) and Why Should You Care?

StopForumSpam is a battle-tested, community-powered database of known spam IPs, emails, and usernames. Millions of reports flow in from webmasters every day. When our add-on checks a signup against SFS, it asks a very simple question: “Has this email/IP/username been abusive somewhere else?” If the answer is “yep,” we flag it instantly. You can then automatically block or challenge the user before they become your problem.

• Works in real time: Every signup and sensitive action can ping SFS.
• Flexible thresholds: You decide what’s “too spammy.”
• Fast + lightweight: Cached lookups and graceful fallbacks keep UX snappy.

Where Our Integration Hooks In (Sngine)

We wired the checks exactly where spammers love to sneak in:

1. Signup: Email + IP (and optionally username) are checked before the account is created.
2. Login flood control: Optionally throttle repeat offenders by IP.
3. Password reset: Block resets from known-abusive IPs/emails.
4. Contact forms / blog comments: Stop link-droppers at the door.

You can run checks silently (log + allow) for a few days to tune thresholds, then switch to block on match once you’re confident. Clean, safe, and not annoying to real users.

How the Check Works (Plain-English Version)

When someone takes an action (like signup), we send a tiny read-only query to the SFS API with the user’s email and IP. The API responds with “appears: yes/no” plus confidence and last-seen details. If the response crosses your configured threshold, we block or challenge the action. If the API is briefly unavailable, we fail safely (your choice: allow + log, or temporary soft-deny).

Privacy note: We don’t store any extra personal info beyond what Sngine already keeps. If you enable “report spammer,” you’ll need an SFS API key and you should only report obvious abusers (the toggle is off by default).

Why Our Add-On Beats DIY Scripts

• Turnkey setup: Drop it in, save settings, done.
• Caching + backoff: We cache clean lookups for a short window to keep your site fast.
• Granular controls: Separate rules per action (signup vs. comments).
• Logs you can trust: Time-stamped audit trail with the exact reason a user was blocked.
• Whitelists & blacklists: Your trusted testers won’t get bounced.

Setup (2 Minutes. Pinky Promise.)

Get the add-on from our Store: Get it here

Smart Defaults We Ship With

• Signup: Block if email appears in SFS OR IP appears ≥2 times in last 90 days.
• Comments/Contact: Challenge if IP appears; Block if email appears.
• Login: Throttle repeated attempts from high-risk IPs.
• Failover: Allow + log (don’t punish legit users if the API hiccups).

Sample Policy Logic (for the curious)

<!-- Pseudocode-ish example of our decision tree -->
if (sfs.email.appears || sfs.ip.appears_count >= 2) {
  if (mode === 'block') { deny("Known spam source"); }
  else if (mode === 'challenge') { show_captcha(); }
  log("SFS match", details);
} else {
  allow();
}

Under the hood we use safe requests, strict timeouts, and cache clean results briefly to avoid nagging SFS for the same harmless user over and over. All this keeps your pages snappy and your DB unbothered.

Pro Tips to Make Spam Really Regret Meeting You

• Combine signals: SFS + honeypot + rate limits = chef’s kiss.
• Whitelist your team: Avoid false positives for moderators/testers.
• Watch the logs for 24 hours: Tune thresholds based on real traffic.
• Enable report-back only for slam-dunk cases: Don’t nuke false positives.

Troubleshooting

Legit user blocked? Lower the threshold or switch that action to “Challenge.” Add their email/IP to the whitelist temporarily, then inspect the logs to see why they hit.

API timeouts? Keep our default timeout and failover (Allow + Log). Check your server’s outbound connectivity or firewall rules.

Too many challenges? Move comments/contact to “Log Only” for a day, then re-enable with a slightly higher threshold.

Ready to Kick Out the Bots?

Install the add-on, flip a few toggles, and enjoy a calmer, cleaner Sngine community.

Get the StopForumSpam Integration

P.S. We’re constantly refining the logic as spammers evolve. Buy once, get updates. Less spam, more humans. Imagine that.