NO MORE SPAM! (Latest update at the bottom)

Hello my friends!

I have been aware of this spam problem - the spam accounts have been flooding the forums with ads and nonsense and it's overwhelming and frustrating. I'm aware, and I hope that you all don't feel as if I'm not seeing it; I've been searching for a solution for months now, and this is what the run down has been so far:

The first few bots early on wasn't awful. My wonderful mod has been kind enough and hard at work of sending me the accounts causing the problems. It was easy to delete the accounts and posts. It then became overwhelming, so I attempted to find a way to better this situation.

After searching through the 'help' pages of Wix(the site provider), I contacted customer support. So far, it's been really no help after contacting them countless times, and only being sent the same 'help' pages over and over, and to be honest I'm unsure if they actually read my emails. Contacting them by phone deems difficult, as I have only done it successfully twice and both times I'm 're-directed' to someone who accidentally disconnects me.

These are my current frustrations and problems on my end:

1. There seems to be no way to filter the bots/spammers from creating accounts.

2. I can't keep up with the bot/spam accounts deleting them manually, and Wix Support is being no such of help in this.

3. By far, the most frustrating, is(even though I've asked Wix for help on this as well), I am unable to find any proof of site users reporting spammers, accounts or posts. It is either flooded in the sea of other notifications, or simply not showing at all for me. There is apparently no way to filter notifications in such a way to filter out reports, submissions, comments, etc. which I find very inefficient as the site owner.

These are my final thoughts:

I will keep trying my best to fix the problems on the forum, as I love the actual interaction people have here. I will keep you all updated as well.

This is an idea that's been thrown at me a lot, and I have mulled it over for a while and am deciding I will begin to see if this is a possible outcome: I'd like to create an app for the coven, or at least just for practitioners. Now; this is a big project that will likely take a lot of time, planning, more knowledge and understanding, but I know it's possible. This is not something I can make happen in the near future, so you'll have to bare with me there.

I hope I can figure this out for us, because this spam here, disrupting out little corner of the world, is literally one of the things that keeps me up at night(as dramatic as that sounds, it seriously bothers me).

I never want to feel like I am too far away to reach. I do get many messages and emails, but I do my best to get back to them and solve these problems.

Thanks for understanding. All the best,

x -Olivia

UPDATE

Thanks to WoodWalkerD, pointing out the reCAPTCHA for forms, I've looked into it and tried to add it to the website. Of course, it wasn't that easy. After some hour or two of trying to follow instructions and not being able to find the place to add the filter, I watched a tutorial form Wix Training on YouTube. Unfortunately, the tutorial has access to applications I do not in my editor in my website. Again, I contacted Wix Support and this is the conversation so far:

Helpful. I know. Updates will be posted.

UPDATE #3

Alright, y'all. Time to celebrate. We got the reCAPTCHA installed after months of emails and passive emails from Wix. We did it.

Hopefully, there should be no more spam bots able to sign up and post here. I'm sure there may be some lingering that we missed, but don't hesitate to point them out in the Moderator Forums so the team can take care of them. Thank you for being so patient with this spam nightmare, but hopefully, it should be over!

Happy posting!

- Admin & Mod Team