Dealing with spammers

[ketanco2]

Hello,
I am a beginner in this forum ownership and I have a general question. I do not require approval users for being member and I do not require approval of posts. So someone just became a member and posted spam (porn) on my forum.

1-Luckily I was receiving the notification of new posts, and I saw his post soon. I went into my forum, banned him forever and removed his post immediately. However I have a question. Is it better to ban him forever or remove him? In which way he can not register again? If I remove him, can he register again, because I wont have his IP anymore, so ban forever is better?

2-Even after I banned him forever, he was still visible online on my forum as a member. Why? Being a banned user, he can not post any messages anoymore right? So why is he still visible among online members though? Or does it matter since he can not post anymore?

3-How should I deal with people and posts like this in general, how do forum moderators deal with this usually?

[Steve Machol]

1. Ban is better. However that won't stop him from registering a new account with a different email address.

2. That just means he's getting the 'Banned' message wherever he looks.

3.Please see this thread: How to Reduce Spam and Registration Bots