Unwanted forum accounts

[Shpangle]

Hi all,

I have included a forum on my new website, however on a daily basis I am getting new members and all they are doing is creating an account and not posting.

Is there anything I should be worried about ?

http://www.shpangle.co.uk/

[enigma1]

Do they login after they create the account? Does your forum sends an email the user needs to click to activate the account?

[Lawrence]

Most of them will be spam accounts. They create loads of accounts all over the net, then activate a bot that spams the lot in one go.

PHPBB by any chance?

[Shpangle]

Yes, I use PHPBB and I have set it up so that I have to activate their account. However it is annoying as I am getting a couple of spammers every day. So for example I have just come back from holiday to find 30+ accounts have been requested..most of which I find are spammers (via the stop forum spam website).

[Alternative4u]

Hi there, I read your posting re forum problem, we too had the same problem, but I closed it down and started another new one, sadly some types of free forums simply never will work, the only people your going to get are Clowns, so maybe it's worth trying another forum firm.
Take a look at my forum at http://alternative4u.proboards.com/index.cgi and see what you think to the way that is working.
By the way I notice you do have to join your forum before people are able to see if it suits them, not the best way to be honest, allow a few months for people to play, then make them join if you like.
People do get fed up with having to keep entering personal data on every site visited, and sadly once they join, forget the password you will never see them again.
Good luck.
David

[Shpangle]

Hi David,

Many thanks for the useful advice. My forum is very much intended for the select few people that I know very well to share advice and ideas. It is not intended for everyone. I am very happy with how it is run as it achieves what it is intended for. The only concern is the number of spammers trying to open accounts and whether there was any way of preventing this.

Thanks again.

[Alternative4u]

Hello, thank you for reply on here, when I formed our forum in 2008 on our site, I was very much in the dark, in fact so much in the dark I wondered if Electric had been invented.
However my sister found a good book to help me called Managing Online Forums by Patrick O'Keefe, she got my copy from Waterstones in Norwich, but it can be ordered at WHS and others the ISBN is 13:978-0-8144-0197-2 hope this is of help to you, I have really enjoyed reading my copy from front to back, it is quite a big book around 293 pages, but the way it is writen it is a dream to read.
Good luck.
David
Suffolk UK

[Shpangle]

That is fantastic advice David !

I didn't realise there was such a book and I will certainly be looking for that.

Many thanks again !!

[Alternative4u]

I find rather odd with our forum that even though people should choose log-in details, we still find that lots of welcome guests are still listed without logging in, I am not sure how that can happen, but it does.
Anyway hope the book helps you in your Forum operations.
bye
David

[joelchrist]

You need to grab more participants by providing interesting threads and topics. Try to have interactive sessions threads.

[Shpangle]

Thanks for the reply!

Its not more participants that was the original problem. My forum is really just there for a select number of people who share a common interest of resin jewellery making, however I was getting people joining on a daily basis just to spam. This has been taken care of recently however as the latest release of the phpbb software seems to have significantly reduced this number.

Thanks
Mick

[dezina]

Originally Posted by Shpangle

Thanks for the reply!

Its not more participants that was the original problem. My forum is really just there for a select number of people who share a common interest of resin jewellery making, however I was getting people joining on a daily basis just to spam. This has been taken care of recently however as the latest release of the phpbb software seems to have significantly reduced this number.

Thanks
Mick

Beautiful jewellery designs you have Mick...bookmarked your site!!