As part of our charity's website, I thought it might be a good idea to include a discussion forum to enable local people to talk about regeneration issues. The web designer set up a forum (phpBB)and since it's been set up, it has just caused me a bit of a headache and is on the way to putting me off including some more interactive features in a community website we're planning. Some of the issues have been sorted out now, which were in relation to spammer types posting up pornographic pictures etc. This was done by including a two-step verification process, however, it doesn't stop me being bombarded with attempts at registrations every day by spammers. A result of the complicated registration process has been that many legitimate people have been put off joining the forum.

I would be interested to know what you think about the following so that when we plan our community website, we avoid many of these annoyances:

1. Are the spammers achieving anything more than attempting a registration (which I delete) or are they somehow trying to use the forum for something more sinister?
   
2. How do other people who instigate features that encourage interactivity - discussion forums, blogs, comments boxes etc avoid this problem of it being hijacked, either by spammers, or by others who just want to write rubbish on it (is it usual to spend a lot of time having to 'moderate' these type of responses?)
   
3. Do you think that this software is any good or has it got inherent problems?
   
4. With planning for our future community website in mind, have you any recommendations for things we should consider when briefing a web design company in relation to this issue?