Is there any way to add a registration challenge to the sign-up process to help stop spammers signing up? Last weekend our site was hit by such a concerted effort to signup and post spam that I had to disable sign-up and make it invitation only. We do like letting people sign-up without having to find or request an invite. Is there a way to add a simple questionnaire to the signup process? We have the standard discourse provided by the very generous Free hosting for open source projects Open Source | Discourse - Civilized Discussion - so installing plugins and similar options are not open to us. Kind regards, Stephen

Hmmm, i’m not sure what solution you can use here. the spam bots use automated post requests to the sign up api endpoint, so any verification question in the UX might get bypassed anyways. i would suggest Discourse hCaptcha but i don’t think you can install it on the free tier. doesn’t look like it from the pricing/plan page [Screenshot 2026-06-01 at 3.44.29 PM]

Perhaps Discourse AI’s Spam detection could help? It doesn’t stop registrations, but it hides spam posts. (Also see: Immediate actions you can take during a spam attack and Tips for Preventing Spam)

is the AI spam detection available for free plans? i’m not sure. i guess Discourse AI plugin is now. the AI spam detection works great if you can get it working for your site. i have it on mine and it keeps things nice and clean of bot nonsense.

Yep, I just checked: [Screenshot20260602070948Bing]

I assume the spam is coming from bots? (Does anyone spam manually nowadays? :thinking:) The approach will differ depending. An alternative to disabling sign-up altogether can be the must_approve_users site setting. But if the number of spam sign-ups is high, this might generate too much work for admins and moderators to realistically handle. [Screenshot 2026-06-02 at 10.45.18 AM]

[Screenshot20260602-114016] This plugin xb help

Registration challenge to stop spam registrations

Product Support

Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency) June 2, 2026, 2:42pm 7

This plugin xb help

Topic		Replies	Views
Add custom registration question to prevent spam signups Feature	6	1655	February 10, 2025
How to prevent registration spam Product Support	27	4622	March 17, 2025
A recaptcha plugin? Product Support auth-plugins , spam	2	413	March 20, 2025
Need assistance with massive amounts of spam Product Support	13	2351	June 10, 2023
How to block certain types of user registrations Product Support	3	277	January 21, 2025

Registration challenge to stop spam registrations

Related topics