awesome thanks again!!
you guys here have been a huge help!
not sure what I would have done if I didn't stumble across these forums 
You're welcome, one of the most crucial things is to have the latest version of the php forum software as most commonly the hacking comes from vulnerabilities on old versions.
Even with captcha you will still get some drive by spammers, we still do, but this makes it harder to automatically create accounts to post spam. In the avast forums we have a large group of regular and they are very active in reporting spam using the Report to moderator link in posts.
So what little we get is promptly squashed (touching wood whilst having fingers crossed), but that does also rely on prompt action by the moderators.
