Help please! My Simple Machine is malfunctioning.

[Placid Dingo]

SMF forum here; http://socialnetroar.com/Forum/index.php

Full of suck and fail (spammerz!) Any advice for a long term solution?

[Cain]

Ban the spammers.  Where spammers come from countries that you would not expect to be forum members, ban them based on domain names, or even entire countries (Macedonia and the Philippines come to mind, as prolific spammers).  Verfiy users before allowing them to sign up - putting the name or email into google may reveal they are a spammer, via sites like BotScout and StopForumSpam, or may reveal bot-like behaviour, such as signing up to hundreds of forums in the space of a few days, making no posts on any of them.

[Placid Dingo]

Thank you. I'm off do that but I'll also point out my tech literacy is low so any and all advice is helpful.

[Placid Dingo]

If I ban an ip am i risking cutting off legit users?

[Cain]

Yes, but for the most part, legit commercial services should be banning spammers from using their service in the first place.  Big companies, like Sky, BT, Comcast, Roadrunner and so on crack down hard on spammers, and so there should never be a reason to ban them.

[Triple Zero]

Does SMF have a feature with which you can ban account + delete all of its posts in one go? If not there's bound to be a plugin/extension for SMF to do so.

Seconding Cains suggestions, especially setting account registration to manual approval.

Another idea--you say you're not very technical but it might be very easy to do I just haven't tried yet--is an idea I had for PD registration. Simply an additional text field where the new applicant has to write 1-2 paragraphs of something or other. A cupcake recipe. A haiku. A very short story. Hysterical swearing at everything (last one may also help to filter bigots).

I can't see spammers bothering to write anything original.

Bonus points if whatever they wrote is set as their initial signature

[Cain]

Does SMF have a feature with which you can ban account + delete all of its posts in one go?

The previous allowed you to delete an account and all its posts in one go - if it also integrated banning, it would be perfect.  I haven't deleted anyone on the most current version, so I don't know if it has been improved yet at all.

[Placid Dingo]

I'm pretty much giving up becaue I can find no way to mass ban members (I have over 1600 pages o members). I'm thinking I'll burn it it the ground, then replace it. Which does involve navigating hostgator control panels, but I'll see how that goes. Thank you both.

[Triple Zero]

wow.

and how many of those would be real?

did the forum have many useful posts or did it get spammed into oblivion before it got properly started?

[Placid Dingo]

The latter.

Afaik I'm the only human

[Cain]

Turn on registration to manual approval. 

Delete all members except yourself.

Watch as members sign up - google their email and their username.  Check their host id as well (use http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/ to check if the host id is not visible).  If they look legit based on all the above criterea, approve them.

[Placid Dingo]

Is there a fast way to delete everyone one? Because atm it looks like I need to go through every page of members to do so.

[Cain]

Admin page - Members - view all members

There should be a box on the far right.  Select them all.  At the bottom, there should be an option to delete all selected members.

It's not as useful as a "prune all" option, but this way you can do a page's worth of members at a time, instead of one by one.

[Placid Dingo]

Admin page - Members - view all members

There should be a box on the far right.  Select them all.  At the bottom, there should be an option to delete all selected members.

It's not as useful as a "prune all" option, but this way you can do a page's worth of members at a time, instead of one by one.

Yep I've found that.

It's just that 1600 pages is still a pretty long process, especially on my Internet speed.

[Cramulus]

can you tell us more about your forum, dingo?