08-13-2011, 01:19 AM
(08-06-2011, 06:42 PM)Ace Wrote: That's because all the IP's will be taken up though lol.
Banning them is not a solution, preventing them is your solution. IP's get recycled all the time, so someone might inherit an IP that got banned, and they will never have a chance on your forum. You can get the IP ranges of certain countries like Pakistan and India if you really wanted, because they are notorious for being spammers on most websites. Nothing racist, that's just the way it is, and I don't know why.
Since they are 3rd world countries though it doesn't make that big of a difference.
Look into captcha registration plugins, and security question plugins. If you use security questions, change all the defaults, make them somewhat difficult questions, and make sure that they are UNIQUE and that none of them are math equation questions. Bots can solve math algorithms.
Also, StopForumSpam is a decent plugin to use.
Delete all spam posts, as that can damage your SEO too.
I hardly get ANY spammers on my forum, I keep it fairly clean, my banlist is less than 10 IP's i'm sure too. I haven't had more than 5-10 spam posts since my forum started. I'm usually on, so I get to deal with any spam posts within the first 5 mins they get added to my forum.
This is extremely good advice, except, the owner I worked for was Indian...other than that... This is good stuff. I told him a lot of the exact same things.
Unfortunately, he didn't listen to me -- most of our active users left as a result, so in frustration I resigned my commission and haven't been back since.
He didn't understand the concept that a flood of bot posts damages SEO... Ace is 100% right on that.