Stop forum spam options

[Bad_Egg]

The obscene volume of fake registrations on my blog forced me to shut it down, but that came at the expense of legitimate readers. So I have reopened registration, and of course the spam has started again. My WP requires new registrants to read an email with a password before they can complete registration, but that doesn’t stop the web bot programs.

I looked into some of the plug-ins and my only concern is the plug-in somehow stopping legitimate users too.

When someone registers, WP only makes mandatory a user name, nickname, and contact email. Was wondering if I made some of the other fields, like a first name, also mandatory, if that would help me differentiate between real and fake registrants or if the web bot will simply see this and fill it in too.

[catacaustic]

Bots will fill in every form that they see so that they can make sure they don’t miss any required fields.

The best way that I’ve found to stop fake registrations in Wangguard (I have only used the free version), and I always use akismet to block comments etc.

[Bad_Egg]

Thanks! Will give it a try.