How to prevent bots from registering on your forum?

[xpl0iter]

So in this thread we will share our favourite methods/tactics by which we can prevent bots from registering on our websites/forums.

This is a method which I found recently on a forum.
They have this field in their registration page which asks for authorization code. This authorisation once they have given in a thread on their board. The thread was names like authorization code thread itself.

Now while registering you would need to goto this thread manually and search for the authorization code and insert it in the field on registration page.

I guess this is an awesome idea and most probably all the bots will fail to do this!
What do you think?

 

[vortex]

I had a client whose forum in Joomla! was being spammed by bots. I just went to http://www.spambusted.com/ and installed the plugin. Bam. No more spam.

I prefer quiet anti-spam measures.

 

[Sam1]

So in this thread we will share our favourite methods/tactics by which we can prevent bots from registering on our websites/forums.

This is an method which I found recently on a forum.
They have this field in their registration page which asks for authorization code. This authorisation once they have given in a thread on their board. The thread was names like authorization code thread itself.

Now while registering you would need to goto this thread manually and search for the authorization code and insert it in the field on registration page.

I guess this is an awesome idea and most probably all the bots will fail to do this!
What do you think?

Too complicated. You want something that stops the majority of spam but doesn't hinder users. What I would do is have an uncommon question on signup- that is easy to answer (Like what is acronym of Search Engine Optimisation). Then I'd have a pruner to get rid of accounts which haven't posted or logged in after a certain amount of time.

 

[xpl0iter]

Too complicated. You want something that stops the majority of spam but doesn't hinder users. What I would do is have an uncommon question on signup- that is easy to answer (Like what is acronym of Search Engine Optimisation). Then I'd have a pruner to get rid of accounts which haven't posted or logged in after a certain amount of time.

Thats true. These measures shouldn't hinder users, and the method I mentioned does just that!! :/