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? About Profile Links in VB

Showing up as links where not expected

         

ken_b

10:45 pm on Aug 17, 2013 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Not sure this is the right forum for this ?

A few years ago I joined a forum community running on VB and placed a link to my site in my profile.

I found this site because looking at my logs I noticed a bit of traffic coming from it.

In the years since I've made less than 150 posts. I lurk alot though :)

Recently looking at my inbound links I see that everyone of those 150 posts is listed as containing a link to my site.

Since I didn't use a signature link, I wasn't expecting that.

Digging around a little I sorted out that it appears to happen because when you click on the "posted by" member name it brings up a dropdown that contains a link titled something like "Visit Members Website" as well as the usual Profile, Send a PM, etc links.

That Visit Members Website link is apparently somehow a direct link to the members website.

Is that normal behavior on a VB forum?

I've never noticed it before, but then I'm a member of very few forums in total, so not a lot of experience with this.

Normally I don't list my site in a profile, but did with the site in question because of the history of traffic (about 700 unsolicited links placed in posts by other members) on that site.

I've taken out the link since discovering this situation.

Again, my question is, is that normal behavior for a VB forum?

Seems odd.

Hoople

11:27 pm on Aug 17, 2013 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



I have seen that in my niche as well. Took advantage of it and added a signature too.

It even goes back and adds the signature when displaying posts that I made before I added the signature too!

All possible of little value but in the size of my niche a website with 150 back links is a medium sized site!

thecoalman

1:43 pm on Aug 19, 2013 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Is that normal behavior on a VB forum?


AFAIK it is.


It even goes back and adds the signature when displaying posts that I made before I added the signature too!


This is phpBB forum or VB forum? I'm just asking becsue I don't know if they have the same behavior.

On a phpBB forum in your profile you can set it to automatically attach a signature which is the default. When you're making a post you can alter this automatic behavior for individual posts on the options tab so you could have posts with the signature attached and one that it isn't. Even if there is no signature set it will still apply retroactively if you add a signature later.

I've modified the script on my own forum so if there is no signature set in the profile it reverts to no signature on the individual post regardless of what is set for the default in the profile. Spammers were utilizing this feature, they would make a few posts that were hard to detect as spam and then come back a few days later when the topic was buried and add a signature. Since it was retroactive it would show up on those posts.

That spam was not really relevant for SE's on my forum because I also modified the templates so signatures and other personal links are only viewable by logged in users.

ken_b

2:16 am on Aug 20, 2013 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



Thanks. I found it odd. Not sure if it's good or bad though.
 

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