I read Kev's article on the different forum plugins that are available for Wordpress sites with interest. The piece http://www.wpmods.com/why-i-dont-use-bbpress/ was really useful for me as I'm currently in the throes of trying to decide what to do with my wedding website forum. I currently use phpBB v3 but as I don't have lots of experience in playing with CSS I struggle to make the forum match the style of my website. The other problem I have is spam registrations. When I first launched the forum, within the first few days there were pages and pages of porn on there - not ideal considering my target audience. I therefore had to change the registration process so that I could vet each registration before they were allowed to post. This has now become a nightmare as I get over 3000 registrations a month, the majority fo them spam. I don't really have the time or the patience to go through all of these to check who is legit and who isn't, and therefore the uptake has been terrible. The forum is dead before it got going. I considered just ditching the forum altogether, but with over 1000 new visitors per month, I really think it could be a success if I can get the thing looking the part, and control the way people register. So while Kev's article was great in terms of comparing the ease of use and the styling, I was wondering if anybody can add to the article with their thoughts on security and spam prevention measures?
Unfortunately, spam is a problem that most forum scripts suffer from. I haven't had any problems with XenForo as yet though spam was a big factor in my not using vBulletin anymore. There are usually a lot of spam solutions available that reduce spam. They can frustrate users a lot as it makes those signing up jump through a few hoops before registering e.g. answer questions, enter capchta etc Via a quick search I found these articles. They might be of help: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=2122696 http://www.phpbb.com/customise/db/mod/advanced_block_mod/faq/f_548
Cheers Kev. I need to get on with getting a forum built as I think that will really help monetize the site, which is the main aim through 2012!
Definitely mate. The long term plan of any business website has to be to make it profitable. Not long til wedding season starts again!
