Help with browser game

[Klown]

Hello guys,

Let me start off by saying this forum is where I've learned to program in php/mysql and feel dedicated to you members. If it were not for Halls, Chris and many others over the years of answering my calls for help - I would not have built a great game.

Being that I do this for a hobby, I spend differing amounts of time working on my browser game - 3 years of part time work to get it to where it is currently.

I have attempted to add a forum several times and failed. Each time I have used PHPBB and got it setup, a few players to moderate the place, and for starters - its a huge spam draw to my server - so many spammers sign up and spam the forums the moderators get tired of it and quit.

I am no expert on how forums are setup / moderated and don't have the time to work on both a forum and a browser game. With a growing game community - I need a forum that will be resistant to spammers and was wondering if someone would be willing to help me setup and integrate a forum onto my game server.

I have little money - as the game is free to play - with purchase of in-game items possible, the costs to host the game, and buy advertising to get new players far exceeds the small revenue it currently brings in. However I know people do not work for free so I am willing to pay via PayPal for this if someone with experience can help me through this process.

If someone would be kind enough to offer advice that would also be very much appreciated. I am just looking for a simple solution to add a forum to my game, - it would be great if there were a way to register my already registered players on the forum at the time of registration too but not a requirement.

Thanks in advance!

If anyone is interested, please email me at: dustinpbowers@gmail.com

[a_bertrand]

I use MyBB instead of PhpBB. It's free, it's a bit smaller (you will not find all those mods and such), but still pretty much all what you need. Add a question only your player knows (for example stupidly the name of your game), add a captca and you should be up and running. So far I didn't got any spam. Another option is to make it so, that once you are registered to your game you get the same account on the forums, but can't register through the forums directly. That may as well solve your spam problem.

[Jackolantern]

Talk to Halls about killing the forum spam. His methods have worked really, really well for us here and pretty much the only spammers that get through used humans to sign-up. It stops about 95% of the spam bots.

[hallsofvallhalla]

The number one spam killer is altering the email you send for verification. Simply break the link and make the user fix it and that will weed out 99% of them. Take a look at the way I did it here.

[Klown]

Thanks for the feedback guys! Invaluable as always!

[Callan S.]

Good thread!