Phoca Guestbook 
Requirements:
- Joomla! 1.5, Joomla! 1.6, Joomla! 1.7
Documentation
http://www.phoca.cz/documentation/category/3-phoca-guestbook-component
Demo (Joomla! 1.5):
http://www.phoca.cz/demo/
Demo Phoca Guestbook and Joomla! 1.6:
http://www.phoca.cz/joomlademo/phoca-guestbook
Trying to prevent from spam
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
=================================================
Please, read before making review based on spam issues
If you hate spammers, please don't blame Phoca Guestbook or other extensions which produce input form field on your site.
To not be spammed, you should make all the recommendations in this article:
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
and of course your server needs to have a lot of different tools to prevent from spam.
And you need to care about your inputs, because for example, you cannot prevent from human spammers automatically :-(
The situation with spam is really horrible (I know it from my experiencs where spam and ddos attacks makes my server down most of time)
If you have some input form, you need to care about it everyday.
Regarding Phoca Guestbook: I am regularly working on different protections for the Phoca Guestbook but reviews here based on spam issues (without reading the articles and making no other spam protections on the server) demotivate me like other "input form" developers. Maybe there will be nobody in the future who will do such extension because he/she will be blamed instead of the spammers :-( :-(
Phoca Guestbook is not the one who spams your sites, please think of it while making a review. And Phoca Guestbook is not the one who ignores the spam problems (just see the article and the features) but you should know that it is really difficult to fight the spam :-( :-(
=================================================
Hi, regarding spam, see above (in description of the extension).
Unfortunately, I cannot fix human behaviour. Spammers like all kind of form input fields and all kind of form input fields are spammed. :-(
But really no idea what is wrong on your server. For example, Akismet removes over 95% of spam (including human spammers) in my guestbook. :idea:
Jan
Hi, Phoca Guestbook works on Android with e.g. Firefox or Chrome. If you are using some browser which is not supported by tinymce editor, you can disable the editor in backend.
Jan
Hi Chris, before making this review without any information and without any useful goals, please see:
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/652-phoca-guestbook-on-server-spam
Every input field on your site of course needs to be protected (guestbook, forum, contact) so set the guestbook right way.
What you mean with backdoors?
As written everywhere. IF YOU OR ANYBODY ELSE KNOWS THE BACKDOORS IN Phoca Guestbook, then just let me know. I WILL BE THE FIRST WHO WILL APPRECIATE SUCH information and will fix it. But until know, everybody is speaking about "backdoors" but nobody has any idea what exactly is the backdoor.
On Phoca Forum, you can see, that most of case, the problem was not by the guestbook itself but by other parts on the server, etc.
Of course, one of the method how to add a spam to the site, is through human spamming. But there is no protection for human spamming. If you have site with input fields, you will allways get such type of spam. I get every day over 50 human spams in my forum. I will never write a review of phpBB that it is not good software :-(
Thank you for understanding.
I would not hesitate to recommend this component that I'm very pleased with, and the added bonus is that it's free. A big thank you for this guestbook!
I generally don't have problem with this extension at all except...SPAMMERS! Oh, i don't know how but they bypass reCaptcha and sending tons of spam...
I know it's not extension problem, but everyone who wants guestbook should be ready to deal with spam.
Hi, answered many times in forum and many times here (see below for more information about spam)
Every site which gets input from users and is known, it will get spam attacks (for example, I am solving now problems with over thousands attacks in few minutes on one server - no joomla, no phoca guesbook - easy html site with input :-( )
So protection against spam, attacks, etc. should be done mostly on server (e.g. with help of security modules on Apache, etc.) and needs to be checked regularly. :-( :-(
Jan
Hi, see:
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
Jan
It looks good and professional, and is a real asset to my site.
Thanks,Jan!
Additional goody: it's free!
Where is settings for shift and simple text input?
Hi, I am sorry, but I don't understand what you mean with "shift letters". I think, this is should be a question for Phoca forum - http://www.phoca.cz/forum
where you can get more advices.
Jan
However, every site I install it on gets targeted by spammers within days. They don't reach the front end of the site as its set to require approval - but I've been suffering at least one spam an hour from every site its installed on, despite having ReCaptcha up and running.
This is seriously frustrating. I've had 2 complaints from clients, who, like me, don't have time to battle this imminent spam torrent. Simply put myself and clients have extra work to do now moderating spam every few hours. This is simply not acceptable.
If the spam issue was addressed (!out of the box!) I would give it 5 stars. As it curently stands, I'm not exactly queuing up to use it on my next site...
1 in 7 posts on Phoca's Guestbook forum are about spam. 665 posts. Of my last 7 emails received to my main inbox, 4 are spam from Phoca guestbook - from just ONE site.
Phoca should really nail this problem. Its hurting their otherwise perfect software.
Hi, every new version of Phoca Guestbook gets some new feature of specific spam protection. I am using different products (forums, comments, etc. by external application) and everyday I fight spam - all website inputs made by different application get spammed, see:
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
I am using phpBB and it is great software, I have installed over 8 different spam protection methods there and get about 10 spams per days there and over hundreds attempts to spam it. phpBB is great software and I will never review it bad because of some stupid spammers (who of course are allways ready to cross every spam protection - as mostly spam is done by human spammers)
So yes, every new version gets new spam protection methods but ... just read the article mentioned above :-(
Jan
Hi, see:
http://www.phoca.cz/documents/3-phoca-guestbook-component/436-trying-to-prevent-from-spam
In Phoca Forum, I am using phpBB project, I get spammed every hour by a lot of spams (mostly human spam). You can find a lot of information about "spam and phpBB". Does it mean, the phpBB is not OK? No, the phpBB is one of the best forum project (similar to Kunena, etc.) but because it is famous, the information about spam is well known. But I will newer rate phpBB with information, it has no sufficent spam options. :-(
Try to read the article listed above and similar article to know the situation about spam problems. Phoca Guestbook uses many spam protections and can be extended by many other anti spam plugins made for Joomla! But mostly this depends on administrator of the site which methods to protect site inputs he/she will implement. As described in the article, try to set that only registered users can leave a message, because this is only one method which can prevent from human spam (and of course this does not work 100%). The site which get input from world must be daily checked, because the 100% protection against spam does not exist.
Jan
