This is more a part of optimizing a forum. You should block SE access to all non-content pages (and forums are full of them). Basically anything that isn’t showing a forum/thread/post gets blocked.
Great comments!
One thing I have tried is to put common words that show up in spam post into the word filter so they are replaced with [spam]. This makes sure that my users (who might not understand it is spam right off) ignore the post.
A good way to foil many human spammers is to prevent new members from copying/pasting large amounts of text.
It’s fairly easy to do with javascript.
Thanks for the top tips. Much appreciated.
Excellent tips.
Dear friends. The spam is awful problem for me. What to do?
Which brings up a very VERY good point - Upgrade, Upgrade, and upgrade some more. Patching and staying up to date regardless of the software, at all times, is often your best defence, yet is the one most people skimp on… Just look at the phpBB fiasco of a year and a half ago. Almost every board that hadn’t updated past 2.0.11 got hacked en-masse by a worm that took down entire sites - even sites that didn’t run phpBB but were unfortunate to just share a server with someone else who was… using a vulnerability that a simple update (a six month old update at the time) could have avoided. The words “NeverEverNoSanity” are now burned into the psyche’s of webmasters and ISP’s everywhere alongside ILOVEYOU and MS_Blaster.
Of course, some people set themselves up to HAVE to skimp on it - using things like (UHG) forum mods… Badly documented mods that might not even work in the next version - or worse, homebrew mods that so radically change the forum software that it’s nigh impossible to upgrade without throwing it all away.
Forum mods are cute, and may add some missing functionality - but you have to ask yourself how badly does this mod nueter my ability to upgrade reliably… I’ve seen more site developers go overboard with portals, forum games, and other nonsense only to have it bite them in the *** a year later when they realize they HAVE to upgrade because they are being hacked over some long-ago patched vunerability… Again, I don’t mean to single out phpBB as the worst offender for this… but there it is. Generally you have to load it down with so many mods to get anything more than the simplest of board functions, meaning it’s a craps shoot every time you try to upgrade…
Again why SMF tops my list, with vBulletin a close second… Most everything I want is built in - the theming system (and isolation of internals in /sources and output in /themes) in SMF being what puts it ‘over the top’… isolating the php for all html output from the code that actually makes the data is brilliant, and gives TRUE theming capability instead of the barely passable CSS FaC most other boards restrict you to - and if you DO screw it up, you can always call the default theme as a fallback, as if you do it RIGHT you never touch the original code of the program…
Well, that and the betas/release candidates being more stable than most other systems stable releases… You’d almost think Simple Machines was run by Opera.
Im an admin on a phpbb board, and we have done nothing in the way of mods. We have the basics and thats it. It works well cause most of the users had never used a forum before this one.
another trick is to simply make the website field hidden. If a registration has the hidden website field filled in then you know that it is a bot and can deny the registration attempt. If it doesnt you can assume it is a human and let it through. Users can still add a website simply my editing their profile after registering, something bots are highly unlikely to do. It cut out spam to my forum 100%
That’s a really smart idea. I’m going to use it on all my forums.
Another idea could be to change the file name of the registration page. Some crappy written bots will have problems with that.
That is really a bad idea! If anyone visits the registration form with a non-graphic screen reader, they will not have any way of knowing that the field is not displayed, and therefore might not be able to sign up.
i’m not following… I have no experience with screen readers to be honest but I cant think of a reason as to why they would show hidden fields to the user?
The screen readers go through the page much in the same way as spambots.
i see. Well, i dont know if im being really slow but i still dont understand why a screen reader would not just ignore a hidden field, since they are typically used to store information that is not to be edited by the user. why would a blind/partially sighted user need to be able to alter this data?
I guess then one should use the suggested tip at one’s own discretion.
I think people are getting confused about the difference between display:hidden and <input type=“hidden”>
I’ve NEVER heard of a screen reader reading hidden inputs out loud… on the other hand, a lot of screen readers ignore css and inline styling outright, so display:hidden is going to do exactly two things… and jack left town, took his **** with him.
i was really looking for this, really tired of spam at my boards…
Well, I assumed that you were referring to hiding the fields using display:hidden, as I would assume the other fields wouldn’t be read by spambots either.
great tips for forum owners…go! go! go! 
i JUST got a spam message on THIS forum.
to whom should i report it to?