For those who run forums, have you been tweaking the e-mail verification option? Which one gives more registration rate, does it matter at all? I myself, find my registration rate descreasing when I have that option on but well, it might be that those registration when the option is off are all mostly faked. All opinions are valued.
I hate having to go back into my email inbox to verify my account whenever I wish to subscribe to a service.
Honestly, when I myself find a forum with email verification on I kinda hesitate, "Is it worth it, OR is it not??" I wonder . Anyways I don't believe its neccessary at all, especially that e-mails on forums are seldomely used. Just my opinion.
If you are trying to build your forum i would highly recoomend against it. Why make it harder for people to join? If you get a few spammers you should deal with it yourself (delete those accounts) - dont make your prospective members suffer for it(email verification).
Thanks for the feedback guys. Well.. but these d@mn spammers keep coming at 5 accounts a day. I've always been disabling my e-mail verification system just so that my members can go ahead and post their first post on the forum. Thanks for the feedback guys.
I have mine turned on for one of my big boards. I find it gets rid of leechers and people that are wanting to just sign up for spamming.
Verification is on, because some people are spamming on our boards or pm our students with offers, ref links etc.
I turned it off as soon as I discovered a low registration rate at my forums. Spammers usually register themselves as e.t.c. so it is better to deny those domains at your ACP. Also, I banned some typos that helped me significantly. i.e. or
I actually have it on...It does decrease registration but atleast i get only "serious" users...(but it depends on the type of forum). in mine, I try my best to keep non serious ones away Plus, it makes more sense depending on the type of forum you are running, I mean if it is a support forum but it's totally different if it is a lets say cell phones forum.
I think the best way is to have it off initially and then on when the amount of spammers is unbearable.
Did you see an increase in registrations when you stopped requiring it? Seems to me if that were the hang-up you would see a lot of people with waiting for mail confirmation, and not necessarily just not signing up at all. Do you require registration to post?
Yes, registration rate increased by another 35% after disabling email confirmations. Sometimes the server is busy causing the confirmation to delay for another 4+ hours. Then, most of my forum audience is not used to email confirmations. I have turned off email confirmation, and placed a bold text near the email field in registration form: "Provide a valid email address, We may require email confirmation prior to activating your account. You WILL NOT be able to log in if your provided a wrong or non-working email address." Also, I have turned image verification on & banned a few typos & fake domains as I've mentioned in my previous post. It hasn't helped 100% because I do get one or two members registering with fake emails once in a week or so but the results are still far far better. I do require registration for posting at the forums.
Email verification off can work for new forums (probably not phpbb) as it makes it easier for new members to use. But as your forums become increasingly high profile, it's often worth putting the email verification back on. At present lots of spammers are registering false email addresses, and you can guess which forums they come back and spam.
Registration rates definitely kick up with e-mail verify disabled. Only problem could be with phpBB...it's image verification system is known to be easily circumvented by spammers.
Thanks for all your comments... just deactivated my e-mail verification... FREE STUFF FORUM Hope to see more new members