Users Awaiting Email Confirmation

[Kay]

I apologized as I know this has probably been asked before, but...

• I had two friends register but did not receive an email confirmation. One had a @hotmail.com account, the other an @xxx.edu account. Why is this happening? Is there anything I can do to prevent/manage accounts that don't receive an email confirmation?
• I had to manually change these new accounts to "valid". After changing these accounts to valid, what happens on the new users end? Does the email confirmation get sent automatically to them? or...? I just want to know if the new user is notified at all that they are now able to sign in/post etc.
• Is there any way to be notified/alerted for any accounts that have not received an email confirmation?

Thanks in advance

 

[melbo]

I just tried to register at your site. Failed 5 times and gave up.
I cannot get past your Capthca image - have you logged out and tried to register? Hit that reload button a few times and see what your new registrants have to get through.

Somethings wrong with the way your Captchas are displaying - they're often off center and not fully displaying.
FWIW, Captcha images are passable by spambots so i would really consider changing to a Question and Answer system.

 

[Kay]

Really??? Didn't know that, checking now...

 

[melbo]

Some others.
It almost looks like a Captcha addon that I tried to run on vB once after they cracked it. They were REALLY hard but these are impossible. I'd go with some Q&A that are super easy for you wanted members to figure out but impossible for Bots or unwanted non-English speakers to figure out :

Question: What are the first 3 letters of my site not counting the www?
Answer = you, YOU, You

Actually, I haven;t used Image Captcha in so long that maybe that's what they look like now- lol.

 

[Kay]

Ok, checked my captcha and 3 other Xenforo sites...mine wasn't really any different from anyone else's. In general Xenforo captcha is just like that, I've re-loaded sometimes 10 times just to get a legible word.

Ok, back to my issues. I'm assuming you were trying to register to see what happens with the email confirmation? If you could please do that again and try to reload captcha...i'm not sure what's going on with these email confirmations and don't want new users experiencing problems (not a nice first impression for new members )

 

[melbo]

I finally found one that was readable and registered. Had the confirmation email within 2 seconds and hit the link to activate. Other than the strange captcha image behavioir, I'd say that they either had the email go to a spam box or didn't realize they needed to click on the link. They were in an awaiting activation state until you manually changed them.

YouVentOnline Account Confirmation Required​

melbo, in order to complete your registration at YouVentOnline, you need to confirm your account by following the link below.
http://youventonline.com/index.php?account-confirmation********************************

Thanks for registering.
YouVentOnline

 

[melbo]

Ok, checked my captcha and 3 other Xenforo sites...mine wasn't really any different from anyone else's. In general Xenforo captcha is just like that, I've re-loaded sometimes 10 times just to get a legible word.

That's insane. Have you ever considered going to a manual approval if you're concerned about spam?
My site is 230,000 posts, we get around 15 new members a day and still use manual approval on top of Q&A
Just a thought from an admin who probably wouldn't hit reload 10 times to register to a site.

 

[Kay]

Now that I know this is what some new members are going through, definitely something to consider. Thanks for the suggestion.

You are probably right, (went to junk mail/they didn't click the link) will ask them about that. Any idea about bullet points number 2 and 3 that I asked above?

 

[melbo]

2 no, the email conf was already sent and somehow failed (likely on their end - most of my users reg problems are on their end)
3 no - You sent an email, they didn't respond.

What we use with manual approval is ragteks Users Awaiting Approval addon which puts another alert in the mod ribbon at the top of any page. It alerts you to a user awaiting manual approval just like a reported or moderated post.

I don't have any in the queue right now but it looks like this:

 

[Kay]

Much appreciated. Quick responses too, thanks!

 

[Jake Bunce]

This might help:

http://xenforo.com/community/resources/dealing-with-spam-filters.366/