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Disabling users with no JavaScript | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Support » General Questions
Aditya
Aditya Mar 16 '13
On the site I am asking about, I am not concerned at all for users with no JS. However, the spam bots that hammer our website are overwhelmingly non-JS capable.


I believe I can stop 99.9% automated spam problems with just this step: don't allow agents with no JS support on the website.


If I want to do this, may I please ask for some ideas on how to do it in terms of theming or plugin? How do I detect the (non) existence of JS and send those user-agents elsewhere?


Thanks.

Aditya
Aditya Mar 17 '13
That is beside the point. It does not matter what Oxwall uses JS for. All I'm concerned about is that spam bots can't understand JS, so blocking user agents with no JS should do the trick.


However, I recall something else that suggests this is a bad idea. Google bot could not parse JS till very recently, and I doubt it even has the ability to the fullest extent even now. Same story with the other search engine bots, or something some innocent developer builds somewhere. It would be inconvenient to compile and maintain a whitelist. Spam bots are just one, though huge, subset of bots.


I must think of something else. The Anti Spammer plugin is useful and does an admirable job, but it is far from an ideal and full solution.