I closed my forums to eliminate the spam bots from posting while I was getting the theme and anti-spam measurements completed. This did not stop them from posting. I then edited permissions to block posting by registered users. I never had this problem before so I am guessing its an error in 1.7
Spam bots are just the nature of running a forum. They will always come, and they will always be there. You can, however, prevent most of them by using spam protection, but I guess you are already on that. Spam bots are not errors in the system, as it is up to you to do spam protection.
You should not be using 1.8 Alpha as a production forum as stated many times. It is not supported, stable, or in a usable state.
I am not using it as a production forum. The spam bots started flooding in while I was setting up anti-spam and a decent looking theme. I want to provide members a taste of 1.8 and I will constantly be upgrading up to 1.8's official release
The problem I am having is that even with the board closed spam bots are able to still post.
You shouldn't have this installed on a website at all chap, localhost installations only really, once the BETA is out you can run it on the web BUT only as a test site even then, not for folk to join and post on.