How to stop spam/bots

[MuslimBB]

The Checkbox Validation doesn't seem like it would help much. There are only 10 possible answers, so randomly choosing one would let 10% of attempts through.

this is not a really elegant option even though its a nice fail check.. but.. realistically that would annoy the hell out of users, sure would annoy me...

[CloudyBright]

The "Registration Security Question" mod has two versions.
You are using the wrong version - search for the version that has a "patch".
It will stop bots from even registering.

[gamemaster]

What i noticed about the spammers is, when your site got the page ranking, more spammers will come to your site.

[Oxygen]

You can also add this to your htaccess and it will help somewhat:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteBase /
  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept} ^$ [OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Language} ^$ [OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP:Accept-Encoding} ^$ [OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^$ [OR]
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} ^(POST)
  RewriteRule .* - [R=400]
</IfModule>

[dynn]

what this code is for?

[laie_techie]

Oxygen, you may want to remove the line which filters based on REFERER - some legitimate users disable this header to improve their privacy - not to mention the REFERER will be blank if someone types in your forum's URL instead of clicking on a link.