phpBB is one of the most popular software products for running online forums. As spammers found forums as a fantastic breeding ground for sending their commercial messages, phpBB admins have a lot of troubles to keep the integrity of their forums. I have been administering a couple of phpBB boards and this is the list of top anti-spambot mods.

I am listing the modifications in an alphabetical order, but I will especially note the ones that offer some value added functionality, as well as those I have more experience with. Because of obvious reasons related to the mods getting updated, I will not link directly to the files, but will use the official pages instead.

Block Open Proxy Registrants

Its main function is to blocks those attempting to register from open proxies. The mod was updated in December of 2005 but some people still use it. Personally I wouldn't use this kind of solution, as relying on predefined lists of proxy addresses is not my game.

Configure Member Profile Required Fields

This mod allow admin to configure which information in member profile is required inside admin control panel. The required field will need to be filled in during registration and upon profile update.


I used this MOD and it worked as a charm, but I should note that the configuration steps could be a bit complicated for an average user. As you are playing with fields, some interaction with the database will be needed.

Disable spambots

This mod uses cryptographic signing techniques to ensure that any comment submissions have occurred from an appropriate comment form (which should stop simple random submission bots), that the form was actually generated for the user who is submitting (stopping clusters of page-scraping spiders), and that at least 5 seconds have passed between the form generation and the submission (stopping bots which fully scrape the page and then immediately submit).

If one of these conditions is not met, the submit operation is turned into a preview, giving human posters another chance to submit.

Textual Confirmation

Textual Confirmation (TC) asks newly registering user a question. If the answer is wrong, TC rejects the registration. Also, TC notifies the forum admin and the community spam database. The administrator can edit the questions and answers in the Administration Panel.