I have a Vbulletin board version 3.6.0 and I get a ton of spammers and I'm the only one watching the board. I went to vbulletin.org and used a program called Prevent Spam 1.0 and it works, but it prevents people from posting when they first join. Is that the best thing to use? is it possible to only block people's messages who have a link or email in their first message? Is there better software for this? Im at a critical early stage where I dont have a lot of posters, but the ones I do see the spammers and get pissed and leave. thanks for any tips.
Hmm, there are a lot of ways to stop spam. I would not advise stopping new members from posting. Maybe you can see if its one person re-registering, if so ban IP addresses.
There are a half dozen or so vBulletin anti-SPAM hacks. There is always a tradeoff when using these things, so you need to study up on each of them at vbulletin.org and see what will work for you. I don't recall all the names of the hacks, but here are some of the things I've done. - Require activation email on registration - Use captcha on registration and on contact page - Use the question/answer add-on to registration page (What is 2+2? Answer 4) and use a unique set of questions specific to your site's genre - Prevent new members from posting a url for a number of days - Use the add-on that bans certain email addresses (with wildcards) from registration... a lot of the spammers are in the same blocks of email addresses, so this helps. - Encourage members to report SPAM posts... in my forums the members jump on Spammers immediately. - Install add-on that lets you ban someone right from the post without going into admincp or modcp. If you do these things, it should cut back on the SPAM. It creates some minor annoyance to your regular members, but it does also cut back on SPAM.
vMail - Verify Mail before registration. http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=162642 Code (markup): 99% spammer don't like to verify email. Facility :: you need verify your email before register. good bye fake email.
the most effective are email verfiy and then blocking the IP I used to do that all the time on my forum, the spammers make mass email accounts and they wont verify