We've been having a problem lately with spambots posting automatically and flooding the board. Until an update is released, the only thing we can do in the meantime is to queue up posts from new users. If you do not have any posts and make one, your post will be hidden until it is approved by a moderator. Once that post has been approved, you'll be able to post without any limitations.
Sorry that we're having to do this, and hopefully you won't see too much of a delay in getting your first post approved - we aren't trying to punish newbies, and we're hoping to turn this off again as soon as an upgrade is released
I've been noticing a dramatic increase in spam lately, glad to know there's a way to curb that.
Hopefully all the new legit users will understand about the queuing, I know I would. Thanks for working out a solution Jazzy!
Yeah, it was starting to get to me that the new posts in every forum were just spam x)
Apparently the captcha on phpbb 3.0.4 has been cracked, and phpbb.com should be putting out an upgrade to make it unreadable by bots again - but they actually said they would in early February. Roll on 3.0.5, but don't expect it any time soon...