[Forum] Vbulletin 4 Patch Upgrade Question + TONS of SPAM

[jtech77]

Hi I would like to upgrade to the current patch leve. My forum has seen a huge inundation of spam registrations and new forum threads over 500 new spam threads in the past few days it's driving me crazy. I installed a mod from vborg that helped but it stopped working or these bots found a way to crack it. Any suggestions? I want to install the new patch level but now that I purchased vb5 I see I have vb4 publishing suite. I currently run vb4 will this be an issue when upgrading? Thanks

[Ace]

It won't be an issue (you can disable the blog and CMS products if you don't want to use them), but you will probably need to upload/upgrade the entire package, rather than just the patch.

There are a few ways to reduce spam, using the Question and Answer Human Verification is a good start, but vBStopForumSpam or Glowhost Spam-O-Matic are even more effective.

[wave-rice]

In addition to the Spam Prevention methods Ace mentioned, you could also deny registration if a user attempts to sign up with a disposable email address. A list of popular ones among spambots can be found here along with instructions:

https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php/406755-List-of-Disposable-Email-Addresses

In addition to this, it's worth mentioning that if you are not going to use either the CMS or Blogs, then disable them instead of uninstalling to prevent any errors.

[Ace]

It won't be an issue (you can disable the blog and CMS products if you don't want to use them), but you will probably need to upload/upgrade the entire package, rather than just the patch.

In addition to this, it's worth mentioning that if you are not going to use either the CMS or Blogs, then disable them instead of uninstalling to prevent any errors.

Definitely wouldn't want to forget that.

[wave-rice]

Definitely wouldn't want to forget that.

Indeed we wouldn't