How to "block" certain users

[Forsyth-Online]

I switched my forum over to vbulletin about a month ago and I have had several international registered users that only post spam. I am a local site for my county and there is really no reason for an international person to sign up unless they are moving to my area. Is there a way to block ip's that are not local? or at least us based?

[UKBusinessLive]

Originally Posted by Forsyth-Online

I switched my forum over to vbulletin about a month ago and I have had several international registered users that only post spam. I am a local site for my county and there is really no reason for an international person to sign up unless they are moving to my area. Is there a way to block ip's that are not local? or at least us based?

within your AdminCP under "Options > User Banning Options" you can add IP addresses

Say for example this ip comes from China 58.119.255.255 By adding 58. you'll be banning every number in the chinese 58. ip range, Thats what i do and it works a treat.

Theres are loads of ip ranges for china so do them as you get them as oposed to doing every single one.

Since doing that i've not had a single sign up from China or Russia

Another way to ban an entire country is to add to the .htaccess like below, i've only done a few examples but you'll soon get the hang of it

<Limit GET HEAD POST>
order allow,deny
# Country: CHINA
# ISO Code: CN
# Total Networks: 1,542
# Total Subnets:  186,401,536
deny from 58.
deny from 59.
deny from 60.
deny from 61.
deny from 112.
deny from 113.
deny from 114.
deny from 115.
deny from 116.
deny from 117.
allow from all
</Limit>

Just remember that the US is the worlds worse Spam country and its best just to check the country from the IPs to make sure you don't ban any US ones

I use this, its pretty cool http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation