I was trying to find a way to block phpBB forum spam bots / spammers, and it took me a while to find out a way that would work with phpBB forum.

After some days and many tries, I found this code on the Internet, and this is working great me, now no more robots, spam, spammers, and all crap from my forum.


Open
/includes/usercp_register.php
and search:
Code:
$username = ( !empty($HTTP_POST_VARS['username']) ) ? phpbb_clean_username($HTTP_POST_VARS['username']) : '';

replace with
Code:
$username = ( !empty($HTTP_POST_VARS['SOMETHING']) ) ? phpbb_clean_username($HTTP_POST_VARS['SOMETHING']) : '';

open
/templates/.../profile_add_body.tpl
search:
Code:
name="username"

replace with
Code:
name="SOMETHING"


Open
/includes/usercp_register.php
search:
Code:
$trim_var_list = array('cur_password' => 'cur_password', 'new_password' => 'new_password', 'password_confirm' =>

add before
Code:
if ($HTTP_POST_VARS['username']) { sleep (20); }



Ricardo Guimaraes
http://www.avatarinteractive.com