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Old 07-06-2007, 01:38 PM   #15
the_logos
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Join Date: Sep 2002
Location: Mill Valley, California
Posts: 2,305
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Re: New Forum Software.

I don't use vBulletin so I'm not sure what configuration options are available but I've found that for small forums (ie those not worth spammers sending humans to beat the CAPTCHAs) it's pretty easy to keep spammers away if you can set up, in registration, a question/answer of some sort that is easy for a human to parse but not for a spambot.

For instance, on one of the registration questions is something like, "Please enter the current month and year in a format like 05-2007." Invision (the forum software we use) doesn't allow for specific question/answers but it does allow us to require that answers are in a particular format (in this case, XX-XXXX). We've had zero problems with spambots since I instituted this method.

It only works, of course, as long as a forum is small enough that it's not worth it for spammers to incorporate the 'answer' to that 'question' into their software or send a human to sign up for the account, but it's easy enough to change the question regularly too.

--matt
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