Often we at Goporta receive many praises from visitor and
customers about the site layout. I want to share a comment
from a potential future customer that found Goporta from ViArt.
 
Some of you will find it helpful as well. By-the-way
we did make many of the changes suggested by this person. Read further down for the other side of the coin.
 
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Visitors comment:
 
I arrived through viart forums, I like your site and I have couple of suggestions.
 
1. Take off the "not rated" of every forum. I am currently working with a client that is also working with a company that produce infomercials for the TV and they showed me statistics about people reacting to certain things. For example they like arial font and bold. and blue background with white letters (like microsoft does), and the
"not rated" was a "no no no" also in this report.
 
2. Change "support" to Contact Us"
3. Delete "help" and change all menus to capital letters.
 
Maybe people will like more titles like "MUSEUMS" on the front page and the menu HAVE to be the same in every page otherwise will confuse people.
 
I will be buying some tickets soon from you :)
 
Take care and good luck!
 
Claudio
 
Customer comment END
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What We Found:
 
During our inspection after receiving the e-mail above.I was reviewing the "RATING" section that uses validates code to enter comments. To my surprise one individual along using the name "jryfibofbvc" submitted over 600 ratings over a 4 month period. Last entries were Feb. 10th..
 
No real comments but various CODES in attempt to find a weak point in the cart system. Fortunately the reviews had to be approved first, so they were not displayed. Secondly, no damage just a few minutes to delete. BUT, we immediately removed the "RATING" feature just in case.
 
Tony
HolleyLand

I think reviews should be allowed for only registered customers, and then the spam reviews would not be a problem. It is lame that you have to disable a good feature just because it can't be secured. Robots can't register as it is, so this is a good approach to limit reviews to those logged in!
 
Ed

Greetings
 
Hi Ed
 
I understand, in our case it was not ROBOT but a register person that insert false info - over a short period of time this individual enter numerous variety of java code, php and C++ Code in the review feature attempting to find a weak spot in the cart.
 
If this was just a robot,it would not have been so disturbing. I'm happy to say No damage was done, nor did I wanted to take any chances of a lucky shot, so the reviews were immediately deactivated. AN sleep better at night for NOW!
 
Tony

:ranting:
 
I agree with Ed on this one

I think reviews are very important IF the site is poulate with them. It's catch 22, if you don't have many it looks bad, if you have lots, it looks great.
I also agree it should only be possible for registered users

Does the built in captcha not prevent robots from submitting reviews?
 
DickS

I am in favour of them - I am surprised at the reviews I get - all positive. I am going to incentivise buyers to review what they bought with some bonus points.

Greetings,
 
Hi All
 
Please, do not misunderstand the review and rating feature adds flair to any site. The problem we faced was an attempt by individual or individuals working hard probing for a weakness in the cart system.
 
1. The person or persons register under several names for example: as jxaest or buueerty7 and so forth.
 
2. the captcha works well in stopping robots but not for humans intervention, that easily compromise the security feature.
 
As a matter of fact, the same incident was reported last week that Google captcha was broken, in the same manner using humans to input the security code.
 
3. In short No damage to the cart, nor did we want to leave the door open therefore the "Review and Rating" are deactivated for the time being.
 
My comment does not reflect nor recommend that everyone should not use "Review and Rating" but to be aware of the possibilities.
 
 
Tony
HolleyLand

My site has also been attacked in this way, causing no site damage, but an overload warning with my host. There was a huge amount of data inserted into the database, and it took quite some time to delete it all. I would like to see a way of securing the review/rating option. Does anyone have a suggestion?

what if you utilize the validation code feature?

I use the validation feature and so far have had no problem - I get a small steady flow of reviews.
 
I have now switched on "Approve Reviews" just to be sure my site is not flooded with abuse - so sorry to hear of your experience Kim.
 
I want to keep the feature on as I get some excellent customer comments across my product range.
 
Chris