update

I see that the spam is getting here too. I recommend for Nick to get the new release of phpbb, it's the new 2.2 and it comes with nice spam features.

I agree

Thats precisely why phpbb sucks. It is a MAJOR pain in the ass to upgrade. I know EVERYTHING will crash, every single mod, every single tweak I made. So no I will not upgrade.

Furthermore, I think a stronger registration system and blocking the offending ip subnets along with deleting the userd that do get through will be more than enough to handle that problem.

Oh noes, spam.

*hides*

I'm with Nick, he knows his shit.

by blocking subnets you risk on banning other people. The choice is up to you, the new one has great features, and I'm sure you can make a test board. Just the search engine thing will be a pain to upgrade.

Yeah unfortunately thats the case, but the spammer ips are usually coming from Russia (probably accounts for 70% of all spam/fake registrations on this site ) or somewhere like that so I really dont care that much about blocking the whole subnet.

As for setting up a test board I could do that, but its deffinitely not a priority. The SEO thing wasnt that hard to do though. Its the ability for mods to delete users for example that I fear of loosing. I think I used the Junior Admin mod for that and I made some other tweaks to it. Other random mods allso will be toast. I havent really looked at what the new features of phpBB are, but one feature they should REALLY REALLY REALLY implement is some kind of standardized mod development installation procedure, otherwise doing upgrades such as this one or even minor security updates is a major pain in the arse.

they have things like super moderators. Their administrative system is very good. Try a test board and see if you like it.