[Digital Jedi]

I have NoSpam! installed on a couple of sites and I think it's perfect at preventing bot registration....if you know how to use it. Far to often I see people coming up with verification questions that actually are too easy. Examples would be simple math questions or "type the word "blubber" in this box."

One of the reasons I like NoSpam! over the one built into vB is the ease at adding multiple questions quickly, but also the ease of adding HTML images. I add dozens of images, make sure the answer isn't in the file name, and have the user identify something basic about the image. Like, how many "cubes are in this picture?" [photo of a bunch of shapes], "This is a picture of a what?" [photo of a cat], "Type the last four letters in the word in this picture" [Star Wars logo] and then I put in the multiple correct answers that NoSpam! allows me to add. I stay away from making people identify colors and try to use the same question for multiple pictures, such as the "this is a picture of what?" question. Depending on the niche of your site, you can even get more specific with the questions (there's no reason someone going to my gaming website shouldn't know who Batman is), but if I do those, I do a lot of them and I add more any time I think of them.

On another site I'm using SolveMedia's CAPTCHA (which may not be making me a ton of money, but I do like how you have to play a video to see the verification string) along with requiring the user to enter in a YouTube URL. (I provide a few right there for them to right click and paste) I've only tested this for a couple of days, but I noticed the garbage registrations have come to a stand still where I was using SolveMedia and a not-recently-updated set of NoSpam! questions alone. Will wait to see how this plays out. I do like this Is Bot thing now that I've looked at it more closely, and may add that in as just another layer of defense and a way to see if I can get some reporting on if my registration protection is working.