Man, you really need to get the spammers under control. It's not even funny how bad it has already gotten. If not knocked down, nobody is going to use that, no matter how closely you've recreated the old forums.
I just checked and there's 139 accounts, with 100+ being spammers...
yeah man. NO mods equal wild wild west.
I mean, remember how civility broke down on an otherwise relatively civil forum when most of the mods left and left just one.
Back in my day when I was mod of the Mercedesforum.com, well by definition I still am, but we had a spam invasion once. We just outright banned them, forever, when it was obvious they were bots, banned by IP. Questionable ones that looked like they might have been a hapless new guy, we asked, warned told them to knock it off and one more time they are out of here (those were usually easy to spot). Of course every now and then, there would be one that try, newbie spammer probably, but dont let it linger. Spam attracts more spam especially in an upstart forum. And when one realize that the message stays there for ages and either take a while to remove or never removed, more. Soon you'll have spam about all types of subjects ranging from spam about some weight loss pill to spam about blue dolphins and I aint talking about the swimming ones.