Forum problem - spam protection blocking everything

Hahaha, you are totally right.

The worst is that I had to modify the standard forum php code to add those constraints because I for some reason I was been bombarded with spam every few minutes.

Even with some of the classic spam check plugins + recatcha and the math question, I was still getting so much spam that if I didn't look at the forum for a few hour, the spam was filling out the first page.

So, I modified the php code to not allow the messages that look like spam.
- Those that contain words like (viagr*, p*lls, etc).
- Those that contain long paragraphs (most spam generated by bots just cramp full articles into big paragraphs that look like a wall of text).
- URL in the titles, too many urls in the message, etc.

By doing that, I got rid of most of the spam, some still pop up, but its far more managable.
The downside, is that depending on your writing style, it can trigger your messages as spam, sorry!

Some tips to avoid that:
- Make your paragraphs only 3 or 4 lines long. (anyways, paragraphs longer than that are hard to read)
- Use (.) to separate sentences.
- Separate paragraphs with a blank line.

Again, sorry for this inconvenients. I will do a search to see if there are better plugins now to detect spam.
Frank