I have something in place on this forum to prevent guests posting URL's ;o)

A clever trick is to make it impossible for someone under a certain postcount unable to post .com, .net, www, etc, and that prevents them from posting links to other sites, with repeated attempts ending in an automatic ban.

I've been to many forums and I must say I haven't seen one spam bot here yet!

Those bots are awful, one will come on and ask a dumb question and then another one will come on and give a dictionary answer. It's like watching two 1950's robots attempt to hold a conversation.

I have changed my forum setup from PHPBB2 to SMF due these spam posts. I think there is some mod also available for this but I am impressed with a few simple step which are being defined in this post. I think that is the easiest way to get rid of spam.

The image validation really helps to prevent bots for registering. I also have e-mail validation turned on and it prevents them from posting. I think it you have a math question like whats 2+3 in the image validation, its even better.

Good idea, they normally come across your script by using default search words contained within the script.

I don't have a phpbb forum; I use SMF software. But I didn't know about modifying the footer.

What I do to prevent spam is use captcha plus registrations have to be manually approved.

However, I have a help desk that guests can post at, and now and again spam shows up there. I'll do the footer modification to see if I can stop that.

it all comes down to marketing to make money i guess.

Most of what you have done I have heard of before, just not the text modification. Really, it makes me wonder what makes these sad individuals write that sort of software doesn't it.

The minor changes are the logon fields i have changed the text to prevent spam bot software understanding them.

The major changes would be the bottom of this page "Created by PHPbb team", changing this has prevented alot of spam hits and then using image verification + md5 hash for agreement and checking to see how quickly a registration form is filled in if below a certain time it will prevent registration =)

Lol indeed! Well, it's working for you, so you've obviously hit the nail on the head.

Is the phpBB modified a lot from the original, or is it mainly tags and so on that you have changed?

Glad you like it , i am recieving quite a few hits from spammers just you dont see there post's due to a few modifications plus some extra features a few of you have may have accidently stumbled upon already.

I agree that it is a refreshing change to see a forum so sparkly clean and free of those nasty drug adverts. Honestly, though bots will hit almost any forum software, this type seems to be the worst.

Thank you ricardo, i try my best to keep them out

I've seen the spam elsewhere, but I didn't realize how much bots were involved.

By the way, it's good to see a clean forum without the spam.