I have a big big problem as I have had to turn off the setting that allows admin to approve new memberships.
We were getting hundreds of applications a day by spambots so have had to stop any new members joining at the moment which is killing a great forum.
We have the fruit mod installed but this has not made any difference.
Has anyone any idea how we can sort this out ?
Thank You

Worked okay for myself, took me to the closed registration page.

Link was very small 

Hi
Have you considered adding some mods as per Derek's link to Boardmod?

Or you may wish to upgrade to 2.5.2 which includes as standard Anti-spam modules: SpamFruits, HoneyPot and Anti-Spam Question with admin choice to activate.

I have the 2.5.2 default questions, honeypot and spamfruits active. The only mod I made was to add two additional spamfruit style questions, like clicking on Tony Abbot's budgie smugglers. That seems to have worked for me, though I am not even sure if the extra spamfruit is necessary - I merely carried it over from my previous version, which had no honeypot or questions.

Customised questions might be the easiest way to go. Anything 'non standard' should keep the spambots out. No doubt I keep out a few genuine users too.

freediver wrote on Dec 10^th, 2012 at 12:10pm:

A customized question(s) is probably the easiest way to go if you're using Derek Barnstorm's Anti-Spam Question mod. But some questions I've seen are so customized or obscure that it would be very difficult for anyone to figure out the answer(s). It's no wonder that those forums only have a relatively few members.

Funnily enough, when I used the anti-spam question mod, I actually provided the answers with the questions to make it really easy, and that mod still pretty much kept every spam-bot out. Silly spam bots.

Dandello wrote on Dec 10^th, 2012 at 3:16pm:

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Thanks to YaBB's easy-to-edit menu, a relatively easy and simple registration process is to change the registration scheme to "Only admin can register new members" so that the "Register" menu item is disabled, and disappears.

In place of YaBB's default registration process, you can add your own register menu item that links to a post in your forum that explains how to register (maybe posted in a Q&A section of your forum). Also, those instructions should be changed in your forum's help section, which is thankfully easy to do through YaBB's Admin Center.

Actually, anyone who's added any mods or changed the registration scheme should remember to change their forum's help section about it so that those instructions are correct.

In the post that explains how to register, which might include the reason for the registration process, i.e., explaining how this is your way to stop spammers from registering, you can simply have registrants send you an email request to join your forum.

Your reply will include their chosen username if it's available, and a temporary password that you can give them, which of course they can change to a password of their choice after they've logged on.

Gratefully, anti-spam measures for YaBB have been modded or hacked that effectively keep out spam-bots. But even if that hadn't been the case, there are obviously other ways to keep spammers out of a forum, and still have an inclusively open forum that allows people to easily register.
Good luck everyone, and good-bye to all spammers.  

Let me know if you want the code. It is mostly a bit of copying and pasting, with a few variable names altered. It is a bit messy, as I don't know how to do for loops etc in pl.

freediver wrote on Dec 11^th, 2012 at 4:45am:

Thanks

I actually just finished doing it. I used a few pics related to the swamp and fishing. I think it came out pretty cool. Now if I could figure out how to disable it like the spam fruits can be.
Im now able to enable and disable.

You can see it in action here

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