How do I minimize or completely avoid bots to spam my forum? It's getting hard to manage them. Any ideas? I'm using vbulletin.
I know what you mean. As soon as I moved to vbulletin, spammers began attacking immediately. A really cool mod to stop bots is this one: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=135094 It blocked about 5 bot registrations within 2 hours of installing it And it's still blocking them everyday!
@touchashley, Thanks. I never knew about this one. I implemented now. Looks like a fantastic idea. + rep. Now i will remove my recapcha and Nospam mods for some time to see if I can live without them. @supernoobice, you can try recapcha and NoSpam mods also. They did well so far until I saw this post.
Sign up at recaptcha.com and get your keys. Go into your vbulletin control panel - left column - human verification options - and setup recaptcha. Then go into - vbulletin option - user registration options - and set it to recaptcha instead of captcha. The new spam bots seem to have broken the classic captcha phrases. A forum that uses captcha is almost wide open. My sons forum was getting around 5 - 8 spammers a day with regular captcha. Once I switched to ReCaptcha, the spam stopped. And the same thing happened on my wifes forum. If you do not want to use recaptcha, use image verification, that is also built into VB.
Hey supernoobice and everybody ... I've installed the vBStopForumSpam Mod and it does wonders! Here's the URL: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=176481&highlight=vbstopforumspam This Mod keeps them frm registering. I know it caught over 800 spammers and bots so far in less tha 2 months. All I did for the registration setup was to put this mod on "ON", and setup the re-captcha and haven't woken up to one spammer since. I just can't say enough good things about this mod, so if you want to stop spam cold whether they are bots or doing it manually, this is by far he best - bar none. Mary