avoiding spam before launch

[davidallsop]

Hi,

I am to launch an updated version of a website. The original website had a message forum for around 4 years which had an uncontrollable amount of spam users and posts, all viagra, porn, etc. I tried most of the anti-spam methods from vbulletin.com to no avail. The forum is now offline, however I am going to launch it again including a vbulletin forum and vbcmps and I want to be sure I minimize the amount of spam as much as possible.

What can I do - as everything I try doesn't seem to work. It would appear the domain im using is on a spam list or something?

Thanks,

[TNCclubman]

100% stop spam in its tracks. by 100% I mean ALL.

Had the same problem as you, was on a bunch of spam lists as an easy forum target...

Heres the solution that is built into vBulletin...

- Add a custom question on signup in your admin control panel.

Something like "Whats the opposite of hot?"
answer: cold

thats it.

They cant sign up, they cant post.

Result: More time to read books.

[forum4]

I know, that simple question is really amazing. I had about 4 spammers join and the email addresses looked funny, so I looked them up online. Sure enough, they were spam bots, so I added the question right away.

Luckily, I banned them before they could post. I haven't had any porn post on my site. A few people spamming, but they get in one post and then are deleted. Nothing too bad though. That question works great.

[mdawg]

Makes sense, but why wouldn't the CAPTCHA that is always (I am running 3.8.2) there stop the spammers just as well?

I've been getting a moderate amount of SPAM - maybe one post a day or so, and we ban the user, ban the IP address, and report the details to
http://www.stopforumspam.com/add
to help others.

One thing I did just modify is that I made it so that even usergroups "Users Awaiting Email Confirmation" and "(COPPA) Users Awaiting Moderation" must "Require Human Verification on Configured Actions," not just "Unregistered / Not Logged In." Maybe this will help.

I also changed the verification option from Image Verification to reCAPTCHA™ Verification which is supposed to be better.

[TNCclubman]

captcha is not perfect. Spammers use ocr to beat it. I posted the solution if you ever want it to stop completely.