Options Manager -- User Self-Registration

This option is set from the Profiles tab of the Options Manager interface.

Introduction

The user self-registration features of Discus Pro allow visitors to your board to create their accounts and join your community. If you do not have user self-registration enabled, the only way that accounts can be added is to do so manually through the User Manager portion of the administration program.

If you are looking to set up user self-registration for the first time, the Self-Registration Setup Tutorial is probably what you want to read. The page you are presently reading describes the available options in a reference style.

Available Options

User self-registration is enabled: If checked, user self-registration will be enabled for the board. In some skins, this creates a registration link or button on all pages (after regeneration). It also creates a "Register" button on the entrance to the profile editor. Note that user self-registration will not actually do anything until you've set up at least one user group to accept registrations; the Self-Registration Setup Tutorial tells you how to do that.

Age verification (COPPA) » minimum age __: If checked, before registration begins, a screen will appear asking the potential registrant if their birthday is before or after the date that corresponds to the minimum age you've selected. If the registrant is too young, they are told that they are too young and redirected to the disney.com web site.

Allow registration into one group only: If checked and if the user is presented with a list of groups to which they wish to register, they will be able to choose only one of those groups. This is useful only in the very specific situation that you have many groups of users that are clearly distinct (e.g., a board for pilots with a user group for pilots from each airline).

Allow registration with an already used e-mail address: By default, an already-used e-mail address cannot be re-registered to a new account. Check this box (at your own risk) to override this important security precaution.

Confirm username/password and application status by e-mail: If checked, instantly upon registering, the user will be e-mailed a reminder of what their username and password is. This is very useful to prevent forgotten passwords.

Disallow e-mail addresses from certain domains (edit domain list): If checked, you can specify a list of e-mail domains that cannot be used for self-registration. For example, if you do not want people with free Yahoo accounts to register, you would check this box and enter "yahoo.com" on the domain list. You can enter as many of these blocked addresses as you wish (one per line). The entry in the domain list corresponds to everything after the "@" sign in the address. You can use a "*" as a wildcard (e.g., "*.ru" would ban anyone from Russia from registering an account).

Hide group list (add to groups checked by default in User Manager only): This is an advanced option that allows you to hide the list of groups from the self-registration screen. The self-registration tab of User Manager allows you to select groups that are checked by default on the group list. If you check this box in Options Manager, the group list is not shown, and registration goes into any groups that would have been checked by default.

Only the board administrator can set up self-registration in User Manager: If checked, ordinary moderators are not permitted to use the "Self-Registration" tab in the User Manager.

Require a "real" e-mail address to be entered upon registration: If checked, users will be required to enter an e-mail address upon registration. The word "real" means that Discus will perform a basic check to ensure that the e-mail address looks valid. Note that if either registration with e-mail verification or queued registration is chosen, a real e-mail address must be entered anyway. Generally you will want this box checked.

Display the following message to a user before registration: Override the default "welcome" message displayed to a user at self-registration by typing another message here. If this box is blank, the default message from the language configuration file will be used.

Hide default "To register for an account, please supply the i..." message: (The first characters of the actual message from the language configuration file are inserted here.) If checked, this message will be hidden from the self-registration page.

Users may change their e-mail address: Choose whether users can change their e-mail address or not:

• Never: Users cannot change their own e-mail address under any circumstances.

• Always: Users can always change their own e-mail address.

• With e-mail verification: Users can change their e-mail address, but when they do, their account is automatically suspended. An e-mail message with an activation key is sent to the new address they entered. When they enter this activation key back into the board, their account is activated. This option provides the flexibility to let users change their own e-mail address along with the accountability to ensure that an actual e-mail address for their account is provided.