Spam management

Ugh. Yeah, we understand.

Disincentivize spam

Image showing the HTML generated for a user link, marked-up with nofollow

Spammers invariably want to post links to external sites.

XenForo marks-up links in user-generated content with a nofollow attribute, frustrating spammers' efforts to have their links indexed.

Stop spammers registering

Potential spammers must defeat our numerous CAPTCHA integrations and pass checks against external registers of known spammers before they can plaster their mess over XenForo forums.

Flood check

XenForo's intelligent flood check sets a rate limit for posting, so even if a spam robot gets as far as being able to create a topic, it won't be able to publish a deluge.

Automatically identify spam

Image showing a topic awaiting approval having been identified as spam

Content posted on your forum can be automatically validated against the Akismet anti-spam service as it is posted and will be hidden from view pending manual approval from staff if it looks suspiciously spammy.

Crowd-sourced reporting

The built-in reporting system allows community members to alert staff to the presence of spam that may have bypassed the automated checks.

Get rid of spam

If spam still manages to arrive on your forum, the Spam Cleaner tool provides a one-stop shop for dealing with it.

It can remove all content posted by the author of the spam, ban the user's account and search for users with duplicate IPs, all without having to navigate away from the page on which the spam was found.

Learn more >