in the end i uninstalled any old Community Builder modules & deleted the files & folders, backed up the database & removed everything from it (which may not have been necessary). then i installed the latest version (1.
of Community Builder, since the database had additional fields i had to go back to the database backup using those (that's why maybe it wasn't necessary to clear the database). everything's working fine for now. i found a captcha solution i now plan to install, unfortunately the solution i found is difficult to integrate into the Community Builder ... stuck again with a new problem