Question

Im adding a comment section to my forums and i want to add a delay, Maybe 30 seconds or so to stop people spamming along with a captcha .

Whats the best way to do this? Only way i can think is using cookies, any other suggestions?

Answer 1

When a user post their comment, write the current timestamp in a session and add it additional 30 seconds:

$_SESSION['postedTime'] = time() + 30;

When you want to check if 30 seconds are passed, get the current timestamp and compare them: if the current timestamp is bigger then one in session, then 30 seconds are passed:

$timestamp = time();
if($timestamp > $_SESSION['postedTime'])
{
    // allow posting
}
else
{
    // decline
}

For more security, you could insert user’s IP + post timestamp in the database.