Hi there,

I have just installed MiniBB on my client's website.

I am inundated with spam adverts on the forum.

I have installed the CAPTCHA Add-on, but doesn't seem to work

Can someone help me?

You have installed Captcha - but are you sure it works properly? Did you tested it?

Can we see your forums URL before saying something definite?

There are various methods of spam, automated and manual. Automated is fully controlled by Captcha. There is no way to avoid manual spam except for banning user's IP. If spammers will swap IPs, this will not help too. There is actually nothing to prevent manual spam, because then you can't recognize where is spam and where is a "valid" message. Welcome to the digital technologies.

Also please check related threads on our forum:

How to protect your miniBB forum from spam bots

Nasty surprise for Christmas - automated or manual spam?

One tip - remove the standard text that is displayed for mini guest post forums, e.g. "You are welcome to post anonymously by entering a nickname" etc etc... Spammers simply search for keywords like this and you're easy meat - they know they don't have to register to post.

You can change this text by looking in /lang/eng.php (or the language you are using). Then search for the bits that display using ctrl + f, and change them to something similar, but with different keywords - removing post anonymously etc... Hope that helps future minibb'ers

Thanks for the tip; but as you see, you were posting as Guest. Not every board has this greatest feature enabled, and visitors should now about it. That could force them to create new, unique posts. If you protect the board by the Captcha add-on, it doesn't matter if spammers find your board or not - they won't be able to automate their devil anyway.

Also, spammers most likely are about posting hyperlinks. Guests in miniBB are not allowed to post hyperlinks. I guess, that may reduce the spamming amount, too. I think spammers already "know" about that feature, so even on our board, we do not experience even manual spam from guests. It's not just worth it.

So I think, we will hold your suggestion by now. We must care about regular visitors, not spammers :)