This guide explains the sign-up process when the “must approve users” setting is enabled, including configuration steps and the user experience.
Required user level: Administrator
When you want to control who can join your Discourse community, you can enable a setting that requires new users to be approved before they can log in. This feature is commonly used for private communities or public forums that want to limit participation.
Configuring user approval
To set up user approval for your Discourse site:
-
Enable the
must_approve_userssite setting.
-
(Optional) If you want to make your community private, enable the
login_requiredsite setting. This prevents anonymous users from viewing your forum’s content.
User sign-up process
Once you’ve enabled user approval, here’s what the sign-up process looks like for new users:
-
The user visits your forum and clicks the “Sign Up” button.
-
The user enters their account details and receives an activation email.
-
After activating their email, the user sees this message on the forum:
Welcome to Discourse!
A moderator must manually approve your new account before you can access this forum. You’ll get an email when your account is approved!
If the user attempts to log in before approval, they’ll see this message:
Your account hasn’t been approved yet. You will be notified by email when you are ready to log in.
Moderator approval process
-
Moderators receive on-site notifications for pending user approvals.
-
If a request remains in the review queue, a reminder email is sent to all users with full Moderator status. The reminder email is managed by the
PendingUsersReminderbackground job, which runs hourly but can be delayed using thepending users reminder delaysite setting. -
Once a staff member approves a user, the user receives an email notification.
Additional resources
Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-05T01:35:58Z
Check document
Perform check on document: