Running a forum

[gkd_uk]

Hi

It is quite a diffcult job when it comes maintaining and running a forum. Once started, there is no looking back unless you decide to sell it or bring it down.

The spammers themselves are enough to keep a forum owner busy.

What do you think?

[RiverWire]

Im slowly managing the spammers now with a couple of little tricks like deleting the members list from display and deleting the chance for people to input there websites and signature upon registration.

I have also been banning email ranges like the @mail.ru range which lot of spammer use.

If you wish i can send you the ranges that i have banned, i take my time in picking the ranges so that i dont ban a lagit person so you should be fine with my list at the moment there isnt many but its working fine.

Adding an extra field to the registration process is also a good idea this will stop the bot's from registering as most bots can now bypass the image verification.

Everything above will stop the bots from registering and getting back links to you site as most will not post they will just aim to get there website in there profile so it shows in the members list.

The second phase would be to ban people from posting links and images for until they have 10 posts.

I have had great success with the links i haven't yet integrated the image ban yet...

Also make sure you ad censored words for the most obvious bad words, this will also stop the spammers from putting masses of nasty content on your forum.

This is purely for PHPBB as VB has most of this as a quick mod or is built in

Hope that helps a little

[gkd_uk]

Thanks Riverwire

I have also banned mail.ru domains. They were a pain and spammers heaven.