How to Prevent and Remove Spam in bbPress Forum Posts

Spam is a global problem that does not only affect email, but also affects forums.  The following tutorial will discuss how bbPress can prevent and remove spam posts.  Currently, only bbPress forum moderators and administrators can login to a forum to remove a spam post.  Some enterprising users have also created bbPress plugins that can be used to help stop spammers (also known as sploggers) from posting.  Preventing spam on bbPress forums is important to both keeping users safe from potential malware threats and removing the negative effects of spam upon the website search engine rankings.

Using Forum Moderators and Administrators to Prevent Spam

The administrator/moderator must first login to the Wordpress Dashboard review all posts and replies for spam.  If they suspect that a post is actually spam, they may go to the post and select SPAM in the post.  This will immediately remove the post from all forum participant views.  After a post has been marked as Spam, it immediately colors the background of the post to red.  Only administrators and forum moderators may review and then select UNSPAM to make the post visible again.   Administrators and moderators must select the UNSPAM option in order to mark it for deletion.  Once marked for trash, the post can then be immediately deleted, or held for later disposal. 

The prevention of spammers/sploggers from affecting the site depends upon the constant management and vigilance of the moderators and administrators of the bbPress forum.  Users must register in order to post.  Preventing a recurring spammer can be a matter of deleting a user(s) from being able to add content in the forum. 

Using bbPress Plugins to Prevent Spam

bbPress also have plugins available that may help to reduce or prevent spam from affecting the forum.  Please visit the Plugins section of the bbPress.org site in order to obtain these plugins.  The site URL is here: bbPress Plugins page .