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Thread: Want to register? Read here. (was: New user registration is closed)

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    Administrator Vidan's Avatar
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    Feb 2004
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    Exclamation Want to register? Read here. (was: New user registration is closed)

    Hello all,

    After some discussion with Sadiki I've opted to disable new user registration at Lea Halalela until further notice. Of course I'm happy to add new members, but it will be a manual process for now.

    This notice will display if you go the forum while not logged in:

    Hello, Guest!


    We've disabled new account registration for now because of excessive spam, but we are still accepting new members!


    To register, request that the administrator create an account for you. Just email registration@leahalalela.tigontwins.com from the email address you'd like to use to register and tell us: 1) your desired username; 2) your birthday (this is required so that we can comply with COPPA laws). Note that it may take several days for an administrator to respond to your request.
    This was done because of a sudden influx of spam user registrations. I would estimate there are about 50-100 per day. Even with new user moderation active, it was giving me anxiety every time I logged in to the admin panel to scan through the emails and delete the obvious spam accounts. I'd say spam is at least 99% -- very nearly all -- of new registrations.

    As for how to address the problem, I've investigated adding reCAPTCHA to the registration screen. However, it appears that the server doesn't support it. For the long term, I'm looking at migrating to a different server, one that would allow me better control of software upgrades, but I haven't established a timeline for doing so yet. Another good long term activity for site security and reliability would be to upgrade the forum to vBulletin 5, but I'm not sure that the current level of activity here warrants spending US$200 on its upkeep -- it's something I've thought about, though.

    For now, feel free to leave any suggestions or comments about the registration situation here.
    Last edited by Vidan; September 14th, 2019 at 04:42 PM.

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