Example:

# [NEW] hUVMWnmUUydG - Lqxeiequ

This is but one of the numerous similar posts today alone. It must also be a tedious waste of time for you to sift through and delete them, is it not?

What options are out there?

The best way to avoid this is to require registration with a CAPTCHA test. We are hestitant to require that though, since it is always an extra hassle for people to post if they have to register and login first.

A cookie that retains username & useful info sorts that out - invariably, the user just opens the website & gets on with posting. Take a look at V-bulletin's approach.

mw...

www.adthermtech.com/wordpress3

Yes, but people still have to register first.

vBulletin has a lot of other spam protection features also. vBulletin looks quite different from the the current forum though (for an example check out http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/ ).

What do you guys think. Is it soon time to switch to another forum software, like for example vBulletin?

vBulletin is an excellent platform. Pics & a number of items can also be added. The eye-candy factor is also stunning, if set up correctly. SEO optimisation pack can be added for very useful google linking etc.

mw...

www.adthermtech.com/wordpress3

When I post a comment on this forum, The software responds displaying my domain ID, I guess these ID's can be used to forbid connections from these domains, I might be wrong.

Any way I totally support a pre registration system where Screen Names are used only by their respective owners, this is a small price to pay in order to communicate with peers.

Yes, bannig IP numbers used to be effective. However, most spam these days is not coming from a single IP number. Instead the spammers use thousands of hacked computers to automatically post spam on forums using thousands of different IP numbers. Fighting spam by blocking IP numbers will only stop the most trivial spam posters. All spam we have seen here lately has not been that trivial.

The spam problem has been growing a lot lately. Jonas and I discussed it yesterday and the problem has now become so big that we might have to do something more drastic about it. The simplest way is probably to switch to a more modern and spam-figting fríendly forum software like vBulletin.

I will discuss this again with the other forum moderators and if everyone agree we will post an official question to all users here on the forum to give everyone a chance to give their opinion about switching to the vBulletin forum software.

I am not an IT expert, so I cannot comment on the merits of the proposed vBulletin, but as a user of different forums, I can say that pre-registration is very helpful. Good Luck

Aside from the pre-registration most modern forum softwares also have a different layout. The simple threaded layout that we have here at CFD Online is difficult to get. For an example of how a vBulletin forum can look you can take a quick look at http://www.vbulletin.com/forum . Personally I like the simple look our current forum has. A benefit with softwares like vBulletin is that they also have features to upload files and images and there is a simple wysiwyg editor when you post to make it easy to add bold text, tables etc. in your messages.

I love the simple threaded layout (very few forums do it the CFD-Online way) but I hate having to look at the garbage; is there any compromise, like can u install any addon packages, e.g. captcha.

We could enforce registration in the current forum and perhaps also implement a captcha test to register in order to try to keep spam-robots away. In the long term switching to a more modern software like vBulletin gives more spam-fightinh possibilities. A more modern forum software also has more features. I agree with you about the design though, I like the simple threaded style.

I like retaining the threaded structure, but most posts are pretty short so doing a full page load seems excessive. Something like Slashdot/Reddit inline threading would be very nice in my opinion, but I'm not familiar with general forum software that does this. Something with LaTeX support would be great. MyBB has threading quite similar to the current system, phpBB3 has a good LaTeX plugin. I'm not familiar with others.

Personally I would not mind registering, but whatever solution you come up with should help.

I think that the most reliable and modern forum software today is vBulletin. vBulletin looks similar to phpBB. The original phpBB developer has stopped working on phpBB I think. So the future for phpBB is not very clear, although it has an active development team and a huge user base.

vBulletin is commercial and should have a more stable future. vBulletin also has a better history in terms of security problems. I am not that familiar with MyBB, but my vote would anyway go to vBulletin.

vBulletin has a latex plugin. See for example http://www.physicsforums.com

vBulletin also has a threaded mode. It will not look like the very simple threaded style we have today on the forums though.

It seems you are inclined to switch to the vBulletin software, ok, go ahead, if you open the gate to I would prefer and I would like threads we would be talking for the next 10 years.

I do not have problems browsing the OpenSUSE or the Salome (OpenCascade) forums, do you Good Luck