With the new forum software version, newbie-level users can now send private messages again.
If you're a guest who's had trouble registering before because your email domain was banned, try again.
The forum now requires image verification to register, which should make it very difficult if not impossible for spam robots to register.
Users with less than 20 forum posts also require image verification to send a private message.
The forum can now be set to limit the number of private messages that can be sent by a user per hour-- the forum is set to 20. If for some reason this actually proves to be a frequent problem for regulars here, we can raise the limit.
This should be FAR more effective to protect against stupid bots like "Daniel Craig" than just requiring newbies to make 10 posts before being allowed to send PMs.
There may be some more useful functions in this new version since it was a major upgrade for the software.
EDIT:
I also cleaned up the ban list. I banned a lot of domains from registering... some even legitimate (like web.de, which is no longer banned) because I caught a lot of spammers registering from them.
I monitored new registrations as heavily as I could. I'd run a background check on the registrations through Google with the info I had, and if they appeared to have a history of spamming or set up some huge red flags, I'd delete their account and ban them before they got their chance to spam. But some of them were pretty damn fast about registering and spamming. Guess ninja skills aren't all they're cracked up to be... but I got most of them (but not the worst one, unfortunately
)
Previously banned forum members with attitude problems, however, are still banned for eternity.
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