UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums Resources and Customizing Admin Zone Approving Registrations and SFS

I've had the Registration Queue turned on for ages (mainly for spammers) and am thinking it is probably discouraging some from coming back if they have to wait hours, or a Day to be manually approved.

What are my options? How are most Forums handling signups?

Can the Stop Forum Spam feature automatically approve registrations if it determines Good IP and Email?

Any help would be appreciated.

Bill

I only use the CAPTCHA on new registrations with Stop Forum Spam set to "auto with message"; the only spammers that get through are actual humans, and it's very rare.

If you opt to insert an API key from Stop Forum Spam you can submit users to the database and track how many users you submit through their site.

Stop Forum Spam not only blocks spammers during registration, but it will also check against their database when the login page is accessed, so if someone gets a registration through before being added to the database, it'll get them again if they've been added since the registration.

So, if someone gets thru CAPTCHA and their Email and IP are good they get through?
What happens if they have a Bad IP or Email?

If they have a bad IP they are prompted and cannot continue without petitioning their IP address be removed from the Stop Forum Spam database.

Do you, or can you use the email verification process?

IMHO, you should always validate email addresses.

Email validations is and has been the basic internet standard for over a decade. That and Captia tests. Anything beyond that double combo is just gravy... and more than what most other websites have set up.

So, let me see if I have this straight..

If I:

Turn off Registration Queue
Leave on Email Verification
Enable CAPTCHA
Set Stop Forum Spam to Auto (with or without message)

Then Registrations will succeed or fail on their own? I don't have to Approve?

yes. that's correct.

I'll give it a try, Thanks!

Mainly because in the UK most ISP are blocking bulk spam from forums and alike, so an email verification can be blocked by an ISP.

I have my forums set to e-mail is required, but not verified as they will mostly not get that email.

Capcha is on and registration que is on as well as detect forum spam.

A request on our registration forums is location, and because I check each registration you can pretty much get a good feel if the user is real or not.


Stop forum spam is a great addition, and has seen me delete on email address but not so much on a red ip address.

I do wish there was a better authentication process out there, not just with our forum but everywhere. In my opinion running a busy forum and ISP blocking our domain wrongly is pretty normal.

Google accounts strangly work fine, but that could be due to anylitics being connected or adverts.

Ive tried to let our forums run on automatic for registration but it just does not work in our case.

I have a note in our registration process saying your registration is a manual process. And watch for your name to show up in new members...

Mark S,

Thanks for your response,

I've been manually approving for over 10 years now myself and have noticed many signups don't verify the email. I've wondered if the verification emails end up in spam folders, or they just don't get it.

I agree, generally it has been easy to spot the spammer registrations by the info they put in and a quick Google search.

I'm going to run for awhile with the settings above and see how it goes.

Bill