I'm thinking of two things : -
1. Upgrading the Forum to v2.x and
2. Preventing anyone NOT registered from being able to access the Forum at all.
We operate a free help forum for IT people and I'm really sick and tired of the script kiddies and would-be hackers. Why these imbeciles try to hack a free help forum, I cannot imagine, but it's constant and every day.
They visit the forum for help and then try to hack in and deface it with their sick advertising rubbish
In an effort to at least minimize my work, I want anyone who wants to access the Forum, to have to register first. I know I can do it with .htaccess, but it's labour intensive. Has anyone developed a Front-End for either SMF 1 or 2 to force a user to create a registration (and store the details in MySQL) and password BEFORE they can even SEE the forum and it's contents?
I REALLY don't want the hassle of trying to create user lists and passwords manually.
maybe just uncheck 'Allow guests to browse the forum' ?
Admin > Features and Options > Basic Features
you should install some type of anti-spam mod it would help, check the mod site.