[Infopro]

Originally Posted by singa

The forum will act as a part of an existing website. As I mentioned earlier I had SMF but got hacked into it, new members would get a porno redirect instead of in their mailbox as their confirmation to their successful registration with us, and basically I had no option but to spend 1 hour a day approving/disapproving new members.

My website has nothing to do with adult stuff. It's tourism and stuff we're doing. So it was a little bit of shock fininding out that members who had just registered were emailed a porno confirmation/link as opposed to a "real" confirmation from us. How the hackers managed I am not sure, but I did catch some of them at 3am trying to ask for help with xumer or something on our forum. And apparently that it was caused the flood of what seemed like automatic advertising and spam sent to our forum from all over the world.

But anyway, thanks to the wonderful tips from all of you guys. I managed to get the categories up and add forums.

The only thing that I will need to do now is learn how to "unlink" the title in the category as for some reason all titles are "clickable" something I don't want. And I need one of these "jump" to the next forum features most forums have at the bottom right og the page.

Anyone here with additional tips for me?

Thank you so much.

And yes, I am starting, albeit slowly, to like vBulletin!

:up:

You know, I'd be interested to find out more about how your SMF got hacked. If I was to guess, was it thru a hack you had added to your SMF forums?

You're posting to a forum for customizing/hacking another forum software that you're now using, so I bet you'll be adding a few things to your new forum too, like your old forum.

Here's a tip, SMF, like vBulletin are both secure software for the most part, it's what you add to them that raises your chances of being hit somehow or other.

I read the user manual. But got stuck when I reached the templates and styles part. There it is suggested that I start learning html and css. I can't. I am far too busy.

The manual should have answered a lot of questions for you, the very helpful stuck threads at vBulletin are also priceless, IMHO, for grasping how the basics work.

You being here seems to me jumping a step or two ahead before even barely being able to make a forum. ( which was covered in the manual I believe)

Lots more to read, you might start with basics, like these two links for example:

Forum Robot Spam Prevention Recommendations
vBulletin 3.7 Questions, Problems and Troubleshooting

Keeping it secure and free of spammers is a lot of work that will never, ever, end. You will have to make time, or you can probably expect more of the same, no matter what software you use.

My 2