I have a fairly low traffic forum but it has a slight spam problem. Every now and then bot-accounts emerge and all kinds of crap gets posted to the forums.

I have one extra moderator besides me and have been able to keep spam under control, but its still a nuisance and useless work.

I'm running version 1.0.8.

I wonder if 1.1 has better spam protection? Or could you recommend some add-ins to help with this issue?

SimpleMachines does a pretty good job on my side. I don't have much spammers on my forum...believe it or not, only had one that actually posted something in my forum in all these years I've been using it.

I don't have version 1.0.8 installed, but does it have image verification during the registration process? Go to register now and see if it asks you to enter the random letters/numbers in a box. If not, then it doesn't have it. You might want to update to v1.0.9 at http://www.simplemachines.org/download/?archive

Otherwise, do the full upgrade to the final 1.1.1 stable version that was released last month. I'm using it now and it's been running pretty well as usual. Even when I was running the released candidate versions they were good. As usual, make sure you backed up your entire SMF directory and also make a backup of your SMF database file in case something does go wrong. Then do the update/upgrade.

If you need any help with this, feel free to post back.

I don't know much about SMF - but does the version you're using offer Captcha Image Verification while signing up?? If it's got the feature turn it on and if it doesn't look around for a mod that'll do it for you. Image Verification will definitely cut down on Spambots being able to auto-register themselves and spam on the forums... It Works

one thing to add to the post above..
pick the one that generates the image on the fly.. avoid using fragments of images and showing them side by side.. bots can detect this

This happened on our website bots were program to sign up a bunch accounts a day and they would send spam. Well someone on our website found something called Spam Poison. It keeps them from posting. They can still sign up but you don't have them posting all the time so its great

-will

Yeah, Ive had this problem with another forum that I have, but luckily not so much spam, that I can just delete it easily.
And iGuest I found what you were talking about and its awesome!

Email verification ?
Fighting Bot Accounts And Spam

Does SMF have the option of sending out account activation link to the email given by the user during registration ?

I am currently testing out phpBB and installed  atest forum which I will remove in a few days...

http://mangalorestudents.In/forum

I am trying to install this for another forum that I plan to start...

but with the test forum fr phpBB I see that there are lots of bots...I have almost 100 users in the test forum...(none have been approved by me and so I guess they cannot post)

you will see that when you try to register it will ask for image verification...But that is not helping much...I wonder if I should switch to SMF and if it has email/acount verification sent out to the email address provided by the user...

I also wonder how you can make out the genuine ones from the non genuine ones... (probably a very basic question -;)

-reply by CalicutStudents