Register page...

[Aptana]

Just a heads up, on the register page there is an anti-spam question about a toolbar, and it asks you to enter the 3rd item on this toolbar.

problem is, the toolbar doesn't actually show in Firefox (v3.5). I had to open the page with IE to answer the question.

[JPnyc]

shows up fine if you don't block it in Firefox.

[Nightwalker83]

I have posted a picture of the menu on the forums if you need it.

[dclamp]

I have posted a picture of the menu on the forums if you need it.

Considering they posted on the forum shows that they have registered. Why would they still need it?

[Aptana]

shows up fine if you don't block it in Firefox.

Didn't show for me, I don't have ABP or NoScript, I have JS enabled too :/

[Nightwalker83]

Considering they posted on the forum shows that they have registered. Why would they still need it?

Not just them but any other potential members!

[dclamp]

I think that it should be a captcha. It is the standard. Also, this may be deterring people from joining the site. But i do see why it is used, so people see the ads/etc.

[Nightwalker83]

I think that it should be a captcha. It is the standard. Also, this may be deterring people from joining the site. But i do see why it is used, so people see the ads/etc.

Yeah, they can still have the toolbar at the top of the page even if isn't being used for a security question, etc. Like you say I reckon captcha would be better because the numbers/characters are next to or near the input box they are meant for. That being said potential members don't have to scour the site look for a needle in a haystack, the needle would be right in front of them.

[JPnyc]

I think that it should be a captcha. It is the standard. Also, this may be deterring people from joining the site. But i do see why it is used, so people see the ads/etc.

if we were to use CAPTCHA, we might as well use nothing. They are both equally effective.

[dclamp]

I dont understand. I use captchas on my sites, and it keeps out unwanted people/robots.

[kfcSmitty]

reCAPTCHA is what I use. I used to use a normal CAPTCHA and I was getting 10-20 spam posts per day. Since I switched to reCAPTCHA I have gotten 0.

[JPnyc]

it's all relative to your search engine rankings. The newer breed of spambot cruises right past CAPTCHA. Perhaps you're not getting visits from these bots yet, but we were getting a little over nine registrations per hour, until I switched to this approach. On some of our sites that don't rank as well, we weren't having that big a problem.

[dclamp]

Ok but what about the other question that used to be on there. It was a math problem.

[JPnyc]

that didn't work for very long. Bots are not prepared to handle complex directions, which humans can easily follow. They also don't generally have a scripting engine/parser.

[penagate]

Joe, we had people in the past saying that the toolbar was blocked by their firewall, in some cases a corporate firewall that can't be disabled. Isn't there some alternative way of showing the Internet.com toolbar which doesn't cause it to be blocked by so many systems?

[JPnyc]

I'll try something and see how well it works