Making an online forum - what is the best software?
 

Hello,

So, in the past I've used phpBB software to make a forum. It had captcha protection and some kind of protections against spam and bots. Things were going well, and I even got a fan sign from Tiffany Preston and I got more than a dozen real members to sign up to the forum. I even got a sponsor to pay me $50 to advertise their program for a month in a header banner on my forum. Some hits were coming in from linked-in webmaster resource pages and even some quality SEO traffic.

Anyway, it all started to go wrong, because some bots started appearing on the forum. 10 or more bots (fake members) signed up to the forum every day. These fake bots posted 30 or more posts a day advertising viagra and penis pills and other spam. The captcha protection was not stopping them from signing up!

So, I need a forum software that has good protections against spam and bots, even if it's paid software. Please recommend a good forum software, if you know one. Lately, I have been thinking that there is much money in making online forums. Not to mention, we are talking on a forum right now.

Thank you,

Fatfoo

I have used IPB, Invision Power Boards, in the past, and never ran into any problems. It is clean software, with tons of options and add on modules. They've also got a program set up to monitor for spam, http://www.invisionpower.com/products/spammonitor/.

Hope it helps.

Are you/have you worked with the old weakgame.com crew in toronto?

I've been using vBulletin for over 5 years now. It's not free, but it's damn good software :)

Quote from WordPress:
"Comment spam is a fact of life if you have a blog"

Same goes for forums, sadly. There are many ways to prevent spammers, but there is no waterproof one. If anyone knows a waterproof solution, then i'd like to hear about it aswell.

I have a big forum using http://www.mybboard.net/ and have no problem with bots and spam :) and its free.

You can make a rule that new members can't start threads until they have 10-15 posts.

This would not really work. Spam bots will just reply 10 - 15 times and then they will start their own threads. The main problem really is about the spam bots. GFY is a very well managed board, especially with the mods, new GFY rules, and banning rules.

Over some years, I gathered a lot of useful webmaster resources. I think that in the future I might make some fatfoo webmaster resource sites. I have a feeling some people will be interested in that. Like I said, already in the past I've has some success with getting paid from certain advertisers. Some good forum software is all I need.

A lot of people right now are doing blog business with posting useful articles and things like that. Some people are writing site reviews of different sites. I think that the reason people go to a forum or blog is to see some potentially useful information that they want to read. So, they don't want to see nonsense replies by bots or by spamming members.

I can see why a forum would need strict rules whether to ban spamming members or not. If anybody is interested, message me on icq:396815963. Thank you.

vbulletin dont waste your time with the free stuff

I'm managing the spam on a forum damn and those fuckers don't sleep. You go to bed all tired, you wake up and you can start your day with bulk rejecting 200 spam thread requests

ipb/vbulletin only

I have a spam free forum with phpBB3 and all I did was the following...

-added a mandatory custom profile field on registration form
-make sure members confirm their email
-first 3 posts and/or threads of new users need to be approved
-users with less than 5 posts can't post links or images and also can not pm other members

Took minutes to set up. phpBB is free and open source with tons of free styles, mods, etc.

http://www.phpbb.com/

vBulletin for sure, assuming you don't mind the user experience being similar to so many other popular boards.

vBulletin for us cant really recommend anything else since thats all we have used...

:2 cents::thumbsup

That's right.:thumbsup

I guess a daily Moderator would do well to delete the spamming posts.

Vbulletin is powerfull.. Smf is free good SEO.

vBulletin is the best, it's worth paying for if you are going to make money off the site.