Anyone who runs their own boards, i need some assistance. I run a car club for my area, well... more like my state, but thats besides the point. I hosted a site and some boards for us to use, but I am having trouble controlling the spam bots. I can stop them from posting, but i can't stop them from joining. My boards are PHP boards, If anyone has any suggestions I am open ears. I figured someone on here can help. I searched google, but not much so I could have missed anything. Thanks

Which forum software are you using? If it has a CAPTCHA image verification for user signup, enable that. Aside from banning certain email domains from registering (eg, most russian ones), there's not much you can do to stop them from signing up. I go into my forum's admin area (vbulletin) and delete the spambots a couple times per month.

PHPBB is total ****.

Use Simple Machines forums.

You can convert your PHPBB user database. It's more secure, it has more features, and it has a TON of support stuff out, is easier to use and has alot more mods.

http://www.simplemachines.org/

What Rob said. That is, if by "PHP Boards" you meant PHPBB. Cause that sentence could really mean about 50 different forums.

It doesn't matter what you use really.

If you're using a free board, it really should be SMF.

I'm a total idiot when it comes to this stuff and even I can use it.

Yeah I meant PHPBB, thanks a ton, I will give it a look.

Oh yeah, and for anyone who cares... http://www.fseriescivics.com/boards
heh, sorry, even if you have our car, texas only... Unless you want to drive from wherever to here for meets hah