vBulletin Forum Spam Defense

vBulletin Forum Spam Defense

If you’ve ever run a vBulletin forum, or any forum for that matter, then you’re aware of those nasty spammers adding unwanted porn, World of Warcraft and miscellaneous “ads.” We’ve looked into how to deal with these issues, and here’s what we have so far to recommend.

One of the simplest ways begins with toggling with your options in your cPanel. When registering, you don’t want users to be able to post instantaneously, you want them to have to go through some sort of process to validate themselves. Yes, this could prove to be long winded and annoying, but if people really want involvement in your community, it could be an asset to have them interact without spam.

Go to your administration cpanel, and click on “vbulletin options” -> “User Registration Options”

Locate “Verify Email address in Registration” and have that running, that will mean that the spammer will have to go through a verification process in order for their membership to be activated. This will deter a great number of vBulletin forum spammers, but not all of them. So you’ll have to be an active administrator/moderator.

What we’ve personally found most effective is downloading “NoSpam!” which quite literally helps in getting “No spam” on your vBulletin. By downloading the plugin, and very simply implementing and installing it, you get to ask a completely unique question which bots take issue with. Why? Well they’re meant to be automatic and as the answer’s (especially if made into a mathematical problem like ’2 + 2 + 7 =’) have to be given or worked out each time. The plug-in is quite easy to find and within minutes you’ll help make your board spam proof.

With our experience, these two tweaks are more effective than using to CAPTCHA images alternative (which helps, but these kick it up a notch or three).

What can inevitably happen though is that good old spammers move passed your clever math equations and still are able to post. In these cases, we recommend searching for the “Akismet plugin for Vbulletin” and checking if that ends up doing the trick.

Written by GeniusImpatience on October 8th, 2008 with 3 comments.

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