Geeklog Forums

When you choose the email a story to a friend link is there anyway to set the from email address to the email address they registered with and not give them the option to change it? I can see how this could quickly get obused.

Your suggestion would work great on a private LAN or a site used primarily by a closely knit group. It causes other problems for those who cater to the general public. Some people don't use their normal email addresses when signing up at public websites. Many use throw-aways because of the prevalence of spam these days. The From line also contains your alias as opposed to your real name which the recipient may not be familiar with. If you change this to the sender's real name, then you have the problem with some signing up with fake names, some not filling this out, and some not wanting others knowing this info. For anonymous visitors, those fields would be blank. If you take these editable boxes away, the recipient may have no idea who the sender is. I don't know if it would be better for GL to add some switching code for this or just tell those with this need to hack the code to fit their situation.

If you foresee a problem on your site, you can always make this feature available only to registered users. You can even add the sender's IP address in the emails.

On most sites, this feature is used very little. Just look at the stats for Geeklog I think you'll find the same thing will occur on yours.

Its a nice feature to have though. The thing I'm worried about is I could easily spam somebody with one of my stories and theres no way to figure out who did it. I was just wondering if there was a hack out there that did this or if I should look into making one. I would just want it to add the email address of the added user not their name.

I think the simpliest hack is to add a log entry to the mailstory function. If you see any abuse, then you can ban the person's IP or inactivate his account if he has one. Maybe something like this: COM_accesslog("Story emailed by UserID: $_USER['uid'] User Name: $_USER['username'] IP Address: $REMOTE_ADDR using the Name: $from and Email Address: $fromemail. Recipients's Name: $to and Email Address: $toemail"; If you go this route, be sure to add $_USER as a global and change the wording about not collecting their info in the outgoing email. You can also add a similiar type log entry for those sending email to registered users via their profile. An abuser could easily send out a bunch of spam or hate mail and then go into his profile and change all the info so you couldn't tell who did it. For anonymous people you wouldn't know at all. IMO logging the info is better and then shut his account or ban his IP.

I'll probably end up doing a combination of the two. Having the current email address and Username and then log everything also. Then change the message at the top of the email to say to report abuse send an email to wherever. I don't see how the option of changing the from email address is of any use anyway