I have been away from my boards for a while and they have been spammed and I need to delete posts and ban members. For some reason, I am unable to delete posts from the message board. There is no delete option. Does this have to be done via the control panel only? I know banning members is. Any suggestions would be most helpful. Thanks.

Both options are available in the threads versions.
But there are several versions of which a recent patch was released for spam/hack protection.
Please specify what version you are using.

7.5.6

Okay if you are logged in as a admin. then you should be able to delete any post.
For example when viewing a post just select the edit button in the post and follow the directions.
For banning a member it would be from the UBB control panel.
Which is by ip.
Control Panel » Member Management then select the ban list tab.
Or you can just edit a member per instance and ban them one at a time.
I guess the real question is what are you attempting to do.

I am logged in as admin but there is not an edit button. When looking at the post, on the top left side there are buttons for the following: New Reply, Topic Options, Manage Topic and Rate This Topic. On the bottom right side there is: Reply, Quote, Quick Reply, Quick Quote, Notify & Email Post. On the bottom left there is: Previous Topic, Index and Next Topic. If I look at all the topics, there is a box on the right hand side of the topics but there is not a delete option there either. Maybe my forum hates me.

If you open the post... there should be a edit post button... you can delete it there. (though I realize you said that the buttons were there just not that one). May be able to do it under manage post. Should have an option to delete post there as well.

I know Ruben already mentioned the patch, with 7.5.6 I would upgrade to the latest version of patches to prevent hacking. Spammers are problematic enough, hackers even more so.

Dunny

I see, I am currently dealing with this issue on this board.
It is probably a permissions setting in forum permissions.
Meaning you have a time setting to allow you to edit the post.
So the time has expired and the edit button is gone now.
This is something that will be addressed in the next release.
Even if you are a super admin.
Some hit or miss forum permissions are honored regardless.
So the edit time is probably 0 right now and you just need to bump it up. The setting is in seconds so it would probably need to be a very large number for a admin.

Correct?

I bet you are right Ruben.

Sherri should check the CP > Group Management > (admins) Forum Permissions > and check/change settings for both 'Delete post time limit' and 'Edit post time limit' and enter large enough numbers (to get back to the date of the spam posts). I'd also look at 'Delete Topics' and 'Edit any post' to ensure they are set to 1 (not 0).

Banning the members with 'delete all posts' option ticked is quick, yet you want the edit and delete forums permissions set up properly to suit your board, regardless.

As admin, I have never had to set that time period before or maybe I just never noticed that it had to be set before for admins to edit. I know that users have a specific time period, I just never noticed that admins also had one also :? I have edited posts even after a week (when I was on vacation) and it was never an issue.. of course with the new patches I haven't tried it.. is this something that is new or just my dumb butt not knowing it before?

Dunny

I don't want to thread creep here but we've been seeing a lot of board spam and I think I'm going to have to add Gizmo's plugin. I want to add a couple of observations.

I could be wrong but links in the profile pages are NOT no_follow. SD you might want to change this in the next version.

So, with the above in mind, I think most spam these days is SEO spam, black hat link building. I did an audit on all of our links in 'homepage' and 'autosig' to, ironically, do a link building campaign. What I noticed is that a lot of spammers will register, add a link in their profile, and call it good. Now, in reality, that link isn't worth a ton of "link juice", but on a site with a high Domain Authority it's better then some other sources.

I'd encourage anyone who cares about their board to do an audit of their links to see what is pointing out.