Anti-Spam - Forum Fortress

Instant, privacy-friendly spam protection. No endless settings. Just less spam.

Built by and for forum admins, Forum Fortress is designed to start protecting your community with almost no setup.

Spam protection starts immediately.

Optionally register in the Forum Fortress portal.

That’s it.

Forum Fortress helps protect registrations, posts and other common abuse points without forcing your users through endless CAPTCHAs or giving administrators another complicated system to babysit.

The Forever Free plan is designed to be enough for most small and medium-sized communities.

For larger communities, or admins running multiple forums, optional paid plans are available at $10/year and $40/year, adding higher limits and advanced features.

You do not need a paid plan just to get started.

Install it. Let it run. Get back to running your forum.

Current version: 1.2

Version 1.2 publishes the description both in the public GitHub project and in the installable package format expected by the SMF Customization catalog.

Version 1.1.1 supports SMF 2.1 on PHP 7.1 and newer and fixes native staff checks, scheduled moderation loading, HTTPS API-key redirect handling, and canonical forum-domain detection.

Version 1.1.0 removes health and endpoint-catalogue requests. Global mode uses api.ffapi.net. A regional selection remains locked unless global emergency fallback is enabled. Standard heartbeats are limited to hourly; Pro and MultiMod may check in every ten minutes.

Version 1.0.8 preserves node-bound offline routing when ordinary API responses omit bootstrap identity, and adds a standalone shared-resilience contract to prevent cross-platform routing drift.

It is the first release licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later; see upload/CHANGELOG.md, upload/LICENSE, and upload/NOTICE.

Version 1.0.7 repairs partially stored bootstrap identities from authenticated site status, preserves the last local identity when a recovery attempt is interrupted, and replaces client-side endpoint ranking with GeoDNS-first routing plus same-request catalog failover.

Version 1.0.6 requires HTTPS for every service endpoint and uses the public /health contract instead of the internal /v1/check-ready route.

Version 1.0.4 removes the configurable control-plane URL and uses the stable plugin service at https://fortress.ffapi.net.

SMF 2.1 modification integrating with the Forum Fortress API (registration, content, profile/signature, moderation bridge, hourly sync).

Public install guide: forumfortress.com/docs/install/smf/

• upload/ — package tree for SMF Package Manager
• upload/package-info.xml — install hooks and default settings

Release archives are built from the Forum Fortress source monorepo with:

python3 plugins/smf/build_release.py

This produces plugins/forumfortress-smf-{version}.tar.gz (and .sha256) for SMF Package Manager upload.

1. Download forumfortress-smf-*.tar.gz from forumfortress.com/#platforms, or build with build_release.py above.
2. SMF Admin → Configuration → Modification Packages → Upload package.
3. Install/enable the package.
4. Configuration → Modification Settings → Forum Fortress.

Or sync into a dev tree:

rsync -a /path/to/plugins/smf/upload/ /var/www/html/smf/

Then install via Package Manager or register hooks manually.

Upgrading an existing install (before package reinstall): copy updated files from upload/, then register the admin menu hook (install via Package Manager does this automatically):

-- Append to integrate_admin_areas if other mods use the same hook (comma-separated list).
UPDATE smf_settings SET value = CONCAT(IFNULL(value, ''), IF(value IS NULL OR value = '', '', ','), '$sourcedir/ForumFortressProtect.php|ffp_integrate_admin_areas')
WHERE variable = 'integrate_admin_areas' AND value NOT LIKE '%ffp_integrate_admin_areas%';

If no row exists yet, insert $sourcedir/ForumFortressProtect.php|ffp_integrate_admin_areas as the value instead.

• SMF path: /var/www/html/smf
• Settings: Admin → Modification Settings → Forum Fortress

Endpoint routing: Global requests use api.ffapi.net. Regional requests use only their selected hostname unless global emergency fallback is enabled, when they may also try both global hosts. The plugin does not probe health routes, fetch an endpoint catalogue, rank hosts, or persist a successful fallback.

API region defaults to Global. UK only, EU only, and US only use their fixed regional DNS hostname. Global emergency fallback is disabled by default. If enabled, the plugin retries the regional hostname before trying api.ffapi.net; processing may then occur outside the selected region. API URLs cannot be entered manually.

Back up the SMF files and database before installing or upgrading the package, and confirm that your forum's normal restore procedure is available.

The Forum Fortress plugin is free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. The hosted service is separate and governed by its service terms. Contributions use the same project licence, contributors retain their copyright, and no contributor licence agreement or copyright assignment is required; see upload/CONTRIBUTING.md.