How to make people register for the forum through admin

[lins]

I want to make the forum private so that people have to come through admin and send a message to me to say who they are.  Is that possible?
Thanks.

[GregChapman]

lins wrote

I want to make the forum private so that people have to come through admin and send a message to me to say who they are.  Is that possible?

Yes!

Go to OPTIONS > USERS > CHANGE PERMISSIONS and clear the "Create_topic" and "Reply" settings for "Anyone" and and "Authenticated" while adding those permissions to "Members". This will force your posters to register which requires that they provide an validated email address, but they still won't be able to post.

Monitor the list of registered users (PEOPLE), sending newly registered people an email asking them for the information you need to grant them permission to post. Once you are satisfied add them to the "Members" group.

You should inform your visitors of your application process as the norm on most forums is to allow posting as soon as you register and some may find the extra security measures frustrating. Better still, encourage them to write to you with the required information before they register, so you know when to look for new registrations.

[mywaytoo]

Greg... Me again!

GregChapman wrote

Go to OPTIONS > USERS > CHANGE PERMISSIONS and clear the "Create_topic" and "Reply" settings for "Anyone" and and "Authenticated" while adding those permissions to "Members".

Yes... This is what I've set up... BUT I manually add them to the Members group after I have received the email (see below) and am happy that they are legitimate users.

GregChapman wrote

This will force your posters to register which requires that they provide an validated email address, but they still won't be able to post.

Not quite... At this point your users 'may' register, which will result in you receiving an email from Nabble telling you that someone has requested permission to register.

Funny enough, my latest user is a spammer... So I DON'T want them to join... However, on my Forum, this person shows, under People, as 'Anyone, Authenticated'... THEY ARE NOT AUTHENTICATED... If anything they should be called 'Awaiting Authentication'... However, I shall not be authenticating this person! So I shall NOT reply to the email...

NOTE: if they had just selected Login, then they would appear as 'Anyone, Authenticated', as with registering, but I will NOT have had the email and therefore will NOT have been placed in the Members group...

I shall have to remove them from my Forum in case other members make contact with them, so I shall have to Ban them... I haven't done this before, so don't know what will happen...

HANG ON... Wouldn't it be better if users pending authentication were NOT placed on the list of people until after they are authenticated... ie. the email has been acknowledged by admin / me...

I'm going to ban the spammer now... How do I know for sure that they are spammers... Because, apart from totally irrelevent context interspursed with non-alphabetical symbols, they appear on STOP FORUM SPAM.

[GregChapman]

Hi Anne,

mywaytoo wrote

I manually add them to the Members group after I have received the email (see below) and am happy that they are legitimate users.

GregChapman wrote

This will force your posters to register which requires that they provide an validated email address, but they still won't be able to post.

Not quite... At this point your users 'may' register, which will result in you receiving an email from Nabble telling you that someone has requested permission to register.

I stand corrected. (My forums are a little more open that yours and I hadn't encountered that "Email from Nabble" bit.)

Funny enough, my latest user is a spammer... So I DON'T want them to join... However, on my Forum, this person shows, under People, as 'Anyone, Authenticated'... THEY ARE NOT AUTHENTICATED...

That's where Nabble has a slight problem - meshing terminology for both forums and mail lists through their "universal back end". That's the problem here when you claim "they are not authenticated". I recently quoted in another topic a post from Nabble that indicates that for them simply having an address in their database counts as being "authenticated". I agree with you it's a poor choice of term for a forum. They really need a one word alternative that means "Email Submitted" and nothing more. Can you think of one?

If anything they should be called 'Awaiting Authentication'... However, I shall not be authenticating this person! So I shall NOT reply to the email...

I would claim what you mean is "Awaiting Registration", which is a step up from Nabble's use of the term "authentication".

NOTE: if they had just selected Login, then they would appear as 'Anyone, Authenticated', as with registering, but I will NOT have had the email and therefore will NOT have been placed in the Members group...

Again, this is a problem with the considerable flexibility of Nabble's permission settings. The way you choose to use the default "Members" group may not be the way anyone else chooses to use it. It all depends on how "authorised" you want your posters to be.

Remember the default permissions are to allow anyone to post, and the same (plus the ability to see the "People" list) for those that supply an email address. You could argue that it's only for people who tighten things up a bit that the "anyone" and "authenticated" terms become inappropriate.

HANG ON... Wouldn't it be better if users pending authentication were NOT placed on the list of people until after they are authenticated... ie. the email has been acknowledged by admin / me...

That's down to your strengthened permissions again! With the default permissions, anyone can post. They just supply a name and complete a captcha to prove they're human. Only those who register (i.e. provide an email address) appear in the people list. It seems very reasonable that only those who offer an email address can be emailed by others who have registered. Again, in the context of a mail list, this is all very reasonable. It only falls down when one tries to get the same back end to drive a forum. Given the "universal back end" there will always have to be a certain level of compromise. It will always be difficult to have terminology that will make complete sense to everyone in all possible uses of the Nabble service.