Hi everyone-can anybody help one of the admins on our site register here?She has been trying to get in for some time and for some reason cannot.
If I pm her email/user name to one of your admins or mods can you help her please.Thank you.neil

By the way, Neil, the first two links to the left of the "Home" button in your forum's menu are bad links. This is easy to fix, so if you need help with it, just let us know.

You have a great looking forum! 

taxineil wrote on Jun 30^th, 2012 at 6:34pm:

Neil, I realized this after reading one of your forum's posts about it. Hopefully you'll be able to get this fixed sooner than later.

Fortunately, visitors have your current forum to access. 

I guess depending on how much downtime you'll be having with your other site, you might want to have it temporarily redirected to a post in your current forum to let people know what's going on.

As I've done it before with our DirectNIC registrar, I believe you can do this easily enough through your Go Daddy account. Then, when your other site is back online, and it's working as you want it to, you can just as easily redirect it to the IP address you have assigned for it.

Or better yet, which is what I would recommend, you can modify your 403 Forbidden error message to describe what's going on with a link to your current forum so that visitors to your other site won't feel abandoned.

Good luck! 

Thanks once again Bill for your help.
Neither of these sites belong to me,I am just helping sort out certain problems they have with spam.Over 1400 had registered,spent a couple of hours banning them all and reset captcha which has eased the problem by about 90 odd attempts a day .
As for the 403 problem I dont have skills for sorting that out,I can follow simple instructions but somethings like code leave me a bit like tax forms do neil

Neil (with one noted exception - see below), the dirty little secret about using CAPTCHA verification codes is that they are easily defeated by spam-bot automation. Your forum is clearly a popular one, so you're going to be a particularly attractive destination for spam-bots.

But here's the good news: Spam-bots can be stopped cold with either Carsten's SpamFruit mod or Derek's Anti-Spam Question mod (there are YaBB forums that use both).

Note: The BoardMod software is needed to install these mods (downloaded from this page - although as I understand it, manual installation can be implemented).

The BoardMod Project's website is here.

Also, and I apologize for not having a link to it here, but somewhere there's a video that shows you how to use the BoardMod program. Maybe you can ask about it over there (you'll need to register). Seeing that video was a great help for me.

In terms of sorting out code, I'm actually in the same boat as you are because a lot of coding is way over my head. In fact, sadly for me, I had to do a lot of reading about how to install, and use BoardMod before I could use it. I was at the bottom of that learning curve.

Thankfully, I got encouragement from people here in this forum to give BoardMod a try. Gratefully, I also got invaluable help and information directly from Derek about the Anti-Spam Question mod he created.

Note: I think the anti-spam mods may have been written specifically for YaBB 2.5 - but they both work perfectly fine with the 2.4 version I use. I see that you use the 2.2 version of YaBB, but I'm pretty sure other admins have been able to successfully install these mods with that 2.2 version.

Recommendation: Read about these mods on the BoardMod Project's website, and study how they are to be installed.

Alternatively, in what I now call "Plan B," you may want to do what I did when this stuff was just too much over my head, and implement a CAPTCHA modification that for our forum stopped spam-bots cold.

Affectionately and gratefully, those of us who have used it call it "ggn's anti-spam hack" (current details about how to implement this clever manual modification can be read here).


Good luck to you and your friends who are using YaBB! 

taxineil wrote on Jul 1^st, 2012 at 6:54pm:

I'm always glad to help. It makes me feel good. I just wish I had the knowledge that Dandello has because then I'd really be able to tackle problems. All she has to do is to look at the back of her hand for solutions; virtually written right there as if it's part of her DNA.

I, on the other hand, pun intended, need to do a lot of reading, and studying. 

I agree, it is funny how one can get drawn in deeper and deeper when trying to learn about something. Should I be thanking spam-bots?

I think you may be right about that. 

Spam-bots are the reason I got involved in this forum again. I was at my wit's end with many hundreds of spam-bots trying to register in our forum each and every day.

Subsequently, after implementing an anti-spam hack, and then anti-spam mods, many hundreds of thousands of spam-bot registrations have been stopped cold.

I was about to shutter our forum in favor of another way for visitors to our site to gather, and communicate when people here in this forum came to our rescue.



Good luck with jumping up along that learning curve. It's not only good for the mind, but it's good for the soul as well. Strangely enough, even your body will feel better as well. Go figure.

Bill Myers wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2012 at 6:18pm:

I was thinking the same thing earlier.

Bill Myers wrote on Jul 2^nd, 2012 at 6:18pm:

Now that was funny