Locks on main threads?

[AnyOldCard]

I know what locks mean on posts but what do the locks mean on the 4 main threads?

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[Tinkerbell]

I am not too sure, I think maybe you need to have made a certain number of posts first to deter spammers? Lawrence will confirm though I am sure. Try again after you made a few more posts and see what happens

[Lawrence]

Posting in those areas is blocked until a member has been registered for 14 days and made 15 posts. It's to deter one day wonders who come on here with the soul purpose of self promotion. Once a member has passed the criteria, that part of the forum will automatically allow posting. In other words, those facilities are only available to members who are willing to contribute over a period of time.

That reminds me, I really need to clarify the rules for those sections.

[AnyOldCard]

I have three forums myself which incorporate SMF with Tiny Portal, I'm a cheapskate (GNU=free) and I have had that problem a few weeks ago. The genealogy forum was up to almost 700 members but every other member was a spammer. I changed over to SMF and did not move nor convert the database. I did not think about the locking of the thread until a certain number of posts, I'll have to check and see if SMF has that function but I'm sure it does.

I guess another way to do it is to make groups and a certain number of posts allow a group to view certain threads, when a member reachs that number they can view and post. Close to what your talking about I think.

You do not have to worry about me posting ads or whatever, I have been totally swamped for 4 months now and it is a one man operation. I have hosted for a little while now (10 months I guess) and have 26 domains on my server. Thanks for the explanation and it makes good sense.

[Lawrence]

The way I've done it is to use U/G promotions. Once a user meets the criteria he is automatically added to another U/G which has additional privileges. If it becomes necessary in future, I can even set it so users can't post URLs until they have proved themselves, though hopefully this will never become necessary.

That's the thing I like about vB forums, all the bells and whistles you need to control the forum come as standard. It's well worth the cost of the licence.

SMF is the best OS forum S/W IMO and would be my choice if I was looking for a free solution. I would never use phpBB though because it's like a pheromone for every spammer and hacker on the net. The amount of attention that S/W attracts from undesirables is ridiculous.

[AnyOldCard]

I would love to check the installation code on PHPBB because I would be willing to bet that upon installation it is listed in the news groups. Thats an opinion of course and nothing more. A friend of mine uses VBulletin and she has the functions also and she does pay a yearly license.

She took it over from Matt at freeauctionscripts.com, a very successful forum and the admin (Matt) has one of those magenetic web personallities and everyone was drawn to him. Me on the otherhand am mixed with pi$$ and vineagar, or thats what my father use to say. I'm sort of a loner and have been on the web now for 15 years.

You have probably noticed that I have a web help forum from my sigline and it does well at times and I do have some very close web friends there. I just have to get away every so often. It will just drive you nuts. I am doing 7 day weeks and averaging 10 to 15 hours a day working on web developement.

I guess it sounds like I am bellyaching but I think I am mostly just tired. It just may also be, one of those days. They seem to come more often now. I'm gone to look around a bit more.