Memberlist Spam help

Hi all.
The SAC site use a phpbb board like this for announcing observing
and for the committee.
We are having trouble with 'new' members appearing on the memberlist
with particularly nasty links.
Is there any way of preventing this altogether?
How was it done on the IFAS boards?

Frank you can set phpbb so that you must approve all new members.

To do this set 'Enable Account Activation' to Admin. Look for this setting in General Admin->Configuration.

I run a small bb for an aviation related club. What I do is disable new memberships by redirecting register.php to a page which just says 'To join please contact an existing member.' See;

firebirds.2ndtaf.org.uk/forums/ and click register to see what I mean.

When we get a new member I just open registration allow that person to join and close it again. I added this admin setting by installing a mod.

If you don't want to do this, make the member list invisible and always put a good 'captcha' mod in place. To make the memberlist invisible, see this mod;

www.phpbb2.de/ftopic27979.html

One or more of these tips will help deter the spammers.

Like what Dave said above Frank, generally is how we do it here too. There is an additional mod which helps decrease the volume of accounts to be ratified. The aforementioned phpbb.com has many mods of different capabilities to help you.

Seanie.

Frank,

A good Captcha (security image on registration) will catch any spam bots that auto-enter data into the phpbb registration fields
There is several complex Captchas for phpBB that will help.
This along with admin approval will cut down your spam users registering.

Darragh

OK so I've installed mods before but what exactly are you to do here?

#
#

---

[ COPY ]

---

#
copy admin/admin_userlist.php to admin/admin_userlist.php
copy templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_body.tpl to templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_body.tpl
copy templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_group.tpl to templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_group.tpl
copy templates/subSilver/images/arrowright.png to templates/subSilver/images/arrowright.png
copy templates/subSilver/images/arrowdown.png to templates/subSilver/images/arrowdown.png

OK so I've installed mods before but what exactly are you to do here?

#
#

---

[ COPY ]

---

#
copy admin/admin_userlist.php to admin/admin_userlist.php
copy templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_body.tpl to templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_body.tpl
copy templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_group.tpl to templates/subSilver/admin/userlist_group.tpl
copy templates/subSilver/images/arrowright.png to templates/subSilver/images/arrowright.png
copy templates/subSilver/images/arrowdown.png to templates/subSilver/images/arrowdown.png

Thats the files that will need to be changed, make a copy of them locally.

ALWAYS keep a backup copy of these files in case the mod goes pear shaped