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November 29, 2006
phpbb antispam
Off late one of the popular phpBB forums that I run was hit by lots of post spam. Everyday there were at least 20 to 25 fake registrations and 5 to 10 posts. Frustrated with cleaning the board every day, I decided to tweak the phpBB forum and install some mods that will prevent spam posts to be made on my forums. Now the forum receives zero spam registrations or posts. Although the board may not be 100% secure from spammers but I have certainly made their life a little difficult.
Here is a breif summary of the mods that I installed.
First thing that I would recommend to do is install the phpBB Anti-Spam ACP mod. This mod will prevent bots from doing automated registrations on your forums by removing fields you want in registration and profile form until users reach certain requirements. This will block many bots but not all of them.
The next mod that you should install is Johanan's Anti-Spam mod. This mod is also to prevent bots from doing an automated registration on your phpBB forums.
The third mod that you should install is a custom CAPTCHA mod for phpBB. The visual confirmation available with phpBB is weak and can easily be bypassed by most of the spam bots. You can read more about How to add a custom CAPTCHA to phpBB2.
The next mod to install is the Dispatched spam protection mod. This phpBB anti spam mod will protect your board from automatically dispatched spam.
These mods will stop pretty much all the spam bots from registering on your phpBB board.
You may also consider installing Links Rejector as an optional mod if you allow guest posts on your forums. Links Rejector will reject all guest posts that contain links.
These mods made the spam posts from 5-10 previously to 0 on my phpBB forums. These antispam mods are not a 100% full proof way of combating phpBB post spam however it will surely help you reduce the spam menace significantly.
Happy posting!
Posted by manish at November 29, 2006 09:54 AM