Gimme Gimme

:)

Man. My board has been hit by spam bots as well. Getting sick of it.

Info on blocking google's various bots can be found here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40364

Or to block all bots:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

And there's a fix for the registration bots here:
http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=390401&

Problems solved :)

Well... before wading too far into too many mods...

I've not got a major problem with googlebot indexing us. Being on google isn't such a bad thing.

So I've implemented one of the changes to expire old sessions from the table as new ones become required

On the subject of bots registering... it turns out this latest version of phpBB we are using supports CAPTCHA codes. Turning them on was a bitch and I had to do it in the backend of the database, but it does now work. All new users will now be required to solve a CAPTCHA.

If that doesn't deal with the bots, we'll look into something else.

Also, I think it's been long enough now - so I've re-enabled users verifying their own registrations. With protection from bots, we should be ok.

I think I have become a fan of the SMF boards, now. They have a lot more security than phpBB boards. Admins have total godly power on smf boards. I can even view (as an admin only) what service provider a registered user has and in what area they are being provided internet service. If a spam bot hits my smf forum, I would know what internet service provided that spammer the tools to hit me with and contact them.

:D

*nods*

I spent some amount of time looking at different boards, portals and similar. The big hurdle is an accurate and correctly working database conversion.

Whilst we are going through a quiet phase just now, there is a large amount of historical data stored here which I know would cause great pain if lost. Accordingly, unless I can see a reliable conversion, we are sticking with phpBB.

I finally installed the ant-bot registration mod on my gamespy forum. It appears to be working. I did notice you still have a couple of bot accounts lingering on the memberlist:

Sergio
jacknaquuin

I noticed you haven't got any new bots, fortunately. -That's good. ;)

Heray for us! Hehe