There is an option to ban IP ranges in b2evolution v5.

I find that the only way of stopping spam is to block IP ranges in .htaccess. The antispam blacklist is simply inadequate and adding terms is something I'll be doing every day of my life if I allowed myself.

There's a very useful range calculator at http://www.mikero.com/misc/ipcalc/ for those of us whose binary and octal base maths is rather rusty :) When I see a spammer, I put their IP address into whois, then ban the entire range of IP addresses. Using the CIDR notation you can ban a million IP addresses with one line!

Of course, this is a rather blunt instrument and it might deny some legitimate users, but it's the only way I can think of stopping them. They get past everything that I've tried.

Have you tried the Turing Test? I can't seem to make it work on 3.3.3, but you might have better luck http://forums.b2evolution.net/topic-24516

I couldn't make turing test to work. I ended up writing my own plugin, similar to turing test. Those non sense spams has since stopped.

But it's those bot that's annoying, hitting my site too many times a minute and sometimes brings down my server. Looking forward to v5 and hopefully it will make banning those bots easier.

I don't suppose you'd be able to share your Turing Test plugin? It would be the one method that would really eliminate the spam.

Since writing my post, I've given up blocking ip ranges--it's just a never ending project which eventually will slow down the server..

Note: there is a captcha plugin included in b2evo v5.

Note 2: a lot of spam is entered by humans (who pass the Turing tests)

My experience of various captchas is that they are almost useless. I have just deleted today's batch of spam comments -- all of which got through a captcha.

A Turing Test would be very effective--on my blog anyway--since I could frame a question that could only be answered by my chosen readership.

What is the difference between CAPTCHA and Turing test to you?

b2evo's v5 plugin lets you define your own set of questions and answers.

Thanks-- I didn't realise the new version's plugin enabled you to choose your own questions.

I didn't realize there's captcha in V5. Will have to check it out.

@loobyloo, it's here http://www.prettyscripts.com/software/b2evolution/form-test-plugin-for-b2evolution-to-prevent-spams

This isn't as complicated as turing test. It's really simple so that it won't turn people who wish to leave comments away (like the one used by blogger, it's illegible!) It won't stop spams purposely entered by humans. My blog got heaps of what appears automated submitted non-sense wall of text, so they have stopped coming since this plugin is installed.

Thanks iceblock! That looks quite promising. I'll give it a twirl.

loobyloo: Hope you got your Turing test sorted. I installed mine way back in 2.*.* and just upgarded to 4.1.7 and it works fine.

I use http://ip-address-lookup-v4.com/ to find range of ip addresses, and as I host my own site, use cpanel> ip deny

thanks iceblock I too like it

François: thanks for adding the plugin and I look forward to testing it in v5 of b2e. I'll wait until my host packages v.5 into Softalicious as it's much easier to install that way than manually.

Thanks Iceblock, very impressed. I installed your plugin this morning so will be interested to see how it works. I am going to try to modify it so that it asks a question which even the manual human spammers won't know how to answer.

Amoun: what Turing test are you referring to? Is it a b2e plugin or iceblock's or something else?

@fplanque wrote earlier:

Note: there is a captcha plugin included in b2evo v5.

Note 2: a lot of spam is entered by humans (who pass the Turing tests)

I have use b2evolution 5.0.3-beta-5 a couple days with captcha plugin and now my blog is free spam (before, with 4.1.6, all day I had delete spam), but the server continues with attack of bots... And this is very bad, because a I need more hardware :-(