A Reliable Free Forum Application or Some Advice on phpBB3

Well, I think it could go in the phpBB segment, but this issue is not merely confined to the phpBB3. I had my first forum (and only until recently) on phpBB way back in 2006-7 and those days, things were quite easier. There were not too many bots and even the Captcha provided was not cracked open.

So I started a new forum (as I have zero money to invest and I was familiar with phpBB, it seemed to be the first preference) on phpBB3. Now, within the last one month, I have found that I have been spending more time cleaning and pruning the accounts created by the spammers, and mostly bots (if I could say so).

I searched the internet and found that their captcha is outdated, and open now which makes it easier. So the question I would like to ask, is -
1. Is there any way I can get that issue fixed and...

Obviously, if not, what other free Forum Apps can be used for the interim - I want to make some money at least to buy out the XenForo one as I really appreciate the looks and services - but right now, it is a costly affair as I would have to shell out USD and I am from India.

 

If you're looking for forum software which looks and functions similar to phpBB without all the problems, MyBB is pretty great. And it has reCAPTCHA built in and stuff, so it's fairly good at stopping spammers, and there's a plugin called Goodbye Spammer Tool which can easily clean up a spammer account and ban it.

If you're looking for something more modern and innovative, Vanilla is my personal choice.

 

Sounds good. I will download and try out the MyBB and Vanilla for sure. Unfortunately, I was shocked to get so much of spam into the phpBB forum and that made me feel sick of phpBB. Thanks for the mention of Vanilla as I almost never heard of this one but it looks to be quite a creative one.

 

phpBB has some recaptcha options, you could try that. Or use the Q&A feature that phpBB has.

But like what everyone else said, you should switch to myBB. PhpBB's development has been slow over the last few months.

 

i believe phpbb is going to close soon the only popular forums i know with phpbb is hackforums (illegal i don't use) and forumpromotion, apart from that everyone uses ipb, xenforo, smf and mybb phpbb support is awful aswell i wouldn't use phpbb use mybb's merge system and go to them.