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Current release for WP 2.5 and upper: 1.0.0
Current release for WP 2.3.3 and lesser: 0.6.3

1. What’s this for ?

Sabre is an acronym for Simple Anti Bot Registration Engine.
It’s a set of counter measures against spam registration on your blog.

Your visitors are granted permission to register freely on your blog and now you are plagued by fake users automatically created by spammers? Sabre is the solution to stop definitely these robotized visitors!

List of available features:

1. Inclusion of a captcha in the registration form
2. Selection of the captcha’s complexity
3. Selection of the background colour for the captcha image
4. Inclusion of a math test in the registration form
5. Selection of the math test’s complexity
6. Inclusion of a text test in the registration form
7. Random or fixed choice of the test to run
8. Unobstrusive tests to detect if registration is done by humans or not
9. Registration blocked if Javascript is unsupported by the browser
10. Registration blocked if visitor’s IP address is found on ban lists
11. The blog administrator can validate the user registration
12. The user can validate his registration by clicking on a link sent by mail
13. Limit the number of days to confirm registration. Without beeing confirmed within the period of time, the user account is disabled
14. Log on prohibited before confirmation
15. User is allowed to choose his password when registrating on the blog
16. User must agree with a warning text, disclaimer or general policy note when registrating
17. User must give an invitation code during registration
18. Main statistics displayed on the blog’s dashboard
19. Custom logo on logon/registration screen

All these features are activated by parameters. Thus, Sabre is flexible enough and fits the protection policy you define for your blog.

2. Requirements

• WordPress: Sabre requires at least WP 2.1 (or up). It is compatible with all versions of WordPress up to the latest release (2.9.1).

3. Installation

1. Download the archive for WP 2.5 and newer or the archive for previous versions of WP. You also can get those files in the plugin repository of WordPress.org.
2. unzip and drop all the files, (within the Sabre directory – including the subdirectories) as is, in your plugins/sabre directory.
3. Enable the plugin in the WP Admin >> Plugins section.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you are upgrading from a previous install, don’t forget to deactivate Sabre before overwriting the older files with the new ones. Then activate it again so Sabre can apply the required database and options updates.

4. Other languages

Sabre is delivered in English and French but can be easily used with other languages. You just have to create a file sabre-xx_YY.po (xx_YY being the language code of your WordPress settings. Eg: fr_FR for French) from the existing file sabre.pot using PoEdit. Then, just translate the text strings located after the “msgid” tag and put the translated string after the “msgstr” tag. Alternatively, you can find the translation files (.mo et .po) of some languages in the FAQ page.

The resulting PpP-xx_YY.mo file has to stored in the “languages” directory of Sabre.

5. Documentation

See the detailled user manual

See the FAQ

6. History

V.1.0.0

- Compliant with WordPress 2.9.1
- Captcha test added: The TEXT test. An alternative to the graphic captcha. The user will have to enter the n-th letter of a randomly generated word.
- Custom sender’s name and Email on the registration’s mail sent by Sabre.
- Enhanced Invitation codes management: Auto-generation of codes, limited use of the same code, period of validity of the codes.
- Bug corrected: Timestamps didn’t take into account the GMT offset from the WordPress general options.

V.0.9.0

- Compliant with WordPress 2.8.4
- Administrator can force the confirmation of registration even when user’s confirmation is required.
- New design of the options screen to reduce the need of scrolling. The various blocks of parameters can be hidden/shown for easier navigation in the form.
- Timestamps now take into account the GMT offset set in the WordPress general options.
- No more reference to “blog” in the messages sent or displayed. This was done to stick with the fact that WordPress can be used in many other ways than a mere blog.
- Reinforced security against potential SQL injection using $wpdb->prepare function during database accesses.
- Action hooks added to allow third part plugins to run functions according to Sabre’s events. See FAQ section for more details.

V.0.8.1

- Made compliant with WordPress 2.7.1
- Corrected bug in dashboard statistics links
- Corrected bug in strengh meter when choosing custom password

V.0.8.0

- Added parameter to activate invitation codes
- Added custom logo in logon/registration screen
- Plugin is now compatible with WordPress 2.7
- Plugin totally rewritten in object oriented PHP
- Message management reviewed to support plural form

V.0.7.4

- Corrected bug in automatic suppresion of the blocked registrations log. A value of zero or less days of retention will now stop Sabre’s automatic cleanup.

V.0.7.3

- Added parameter to choose between black or white background for the captcha image.
- Added parameter to ask the user to read and agree with the general policy rules of the blog before registration.
- Sabre has been made compliant with the possibility offered by WordPress 2.6 to move the wp-content directory to a custom location.

V.0.7.2

- Added parameter to let the blog admin validate the user registration.
- Revised admin interface for the management of registrations to confirm.
- Added tab “Registrations to confirm”.

V.0.7.1

- Added parameter to let the user choose his password during the registration.
- Added parameter to display Sabre’s statistics on the dashboard.

V.0.7.0

- This version requires WordPress 2.5 and can’t be used with previous versions of WordPress.
- Administration panel has been reworked to stick with the new WordPress admin interface.
- Added parameter to receive a mail whenever a new user confirms his registration.

V.0.6.3

- Small adjustments done to comply with WordPress 2.3.3

V.0.6.2

- Added parameter to check if IP address is banned by DNSBL servers.

V.0.6.1

- Change the Sabre table definition as some MySql versions doesn’t allow text columns to have default value. This was preventing the creation of the table during Sabre initialization in some occasions.

V. 0.6.0

- Added parameter to delete WordPress account automatically when registration is canceled, either manually or because of exceeded period of time.
- Added parameter to insert a reference to Sabre at the bottom of the registration form.
- Added parameter to select the number of days for automatic purge of history log.
- Added parameter to delete all information about Sabre when deactivating the plugin. This will clean your WordPress blog of tables and options created by Sabre, if you decide to stop using Sabre.
- Performance improvement bypassing the tests if errors already detected before calling Sabre (eg. user name and/or mail missing)
- Performance improvement by code optimization
- Reinforced access security to the administration panels of Sabre using wp_nonce_field

V. 0.4.2

Corrected bug in the storage of the number of days for registration’s confirmation.

V. 0.4.1

- Added parameter to deny/authorize newly registered users to sign in before registration is confirmed.
- Added the possibility to automatically register all existing WordPress accounts.
- Added several messages to give the status of operations done.

V. 0.4.0

Added several new internal tests to make Sabre more efficient in spambot detection. Those tests run undetected for regular human registrars. Those new tests are:
- Control that the registration form is loaded before the answer is sent to the server.
- Control that the IP adress of the requester is the same when the form is sent back.
- Control that the browser used to register has Javascript capabilities as many spambots lack them.
- Control that the Javascript capability is not faked.
- Control that the registration is done within a maximum period of time.
- Control that the registration form is possibly filled by a human, in a minimum amount of time.
Changed the way to control who can bypass the registration confirmation : Sabre now tests the “edit_users” capability and no longer the user level. This will ensure that all accounts with a high level of rights will always be able to sign in.

V. 0.2.2 (Stable)

- Code optimized and splitted in various files to reduce server load.
- Automatic cleanup enhanced.

V. 0.2.1 (Stable)

- Added a possibility to include the test randomly in the registration form.
- Added manual suppression of logs.

V. 0.1.1 (Beta)

First public version