# Make email optional
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [May 24, 2022, 1:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971 "2022-05-24T13:57:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@codergautam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codergautam)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 1:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/1 "2022-05-24T13:57:56Z")
I know everyone will hate me for this, but I need a way to make email optional, or at least make the email verification optional.
The main problem is, i’m making a forum for a game, and mostly kids aged 8-12 play it. A lot of them don’t have a personal email, and they end up using their school one, which doesn’t allow emails from 3rd party domains.
For my game, I have a login system with just a username, a password, and an optional email for password recovery. This system worked much better for us, instead of forcing email verification.
Is there a way to do this with discourse? I’m selfhosting and I’m willing to learn how to make a plugin for this (some JS, PY and PHP experience)
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 2:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/2 "2022-05-24T14:10:19Z")
Did you take a look at these results?
[https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=register%20without%20email](https://meta.discourse.org/search?q=register%20without%20email)
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### Author:  [@codergautam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codergautam)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 2:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/3 "2022-05-24T14:54:50Z")
Yes, I have, but none of them really helps me.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 2:58pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/4 "2022-05-24T14:58:42Z")
Maybe you could recommend that they speak to their parents (or guardians or whatever) about registering with their email addresses.
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### Author:  [@codergautam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codergautam)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 3:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/5 "2022-05-24T15:03:05Z")
I will add that message, but not really a viable solution because the average player wouldn’t bother asking their parents
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 3:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/6 "2022-05-24T15:04:59Z")
It would probably be a good thing if those children don’t get to join internet forums until they’re older 🙂
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### Author:  [@codergautam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codergautam)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 4:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/7 "2022-05-24T16:39:00Z")
😕 I guess, but is there a way to at least auto verify users?
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 5:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/8 "2022-05-24T17:04:43Z")
You can use Social logins (facebook, gmail, and others) and those don’t require email validation. Also, systems that use [DiscourseConnect](https://meta.discourse.org/t/13045?silent=true) (SSO) don’t require validation, so you could set up WordPress and contrive to have it let anyone in the world create an account with no means to validate who they are and then use the wp-discourse plugin to authenticate against wordpress.
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### Author:  [@Jonathan5](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jonathan5)
#### Post date: [May 24, 2022, 5:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/9 "2022-05-24T17:20:54Z")
You could teach them about spam and anonymity from an early age and get them to use a disposable email address service like [https://www.guerrillamail.com/](https://www.guerrillamail.com/)
There might be some ideas here: [email address for children - Brave Search](https://search.brave.com/search?q=email%20address%20for%20children)
There are probably so many potential pitfalls in starting a forum for children that email authentication will be the least of your worries…
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### Author:  [@codergautam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codergautam)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2022, 2:46pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/10 "2022-05-25T14:46:27Z")
In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion of just keeping everything as-is. I understand why using plugins/sso would be a security risk and for the children who doesn’t have email, well they can still browse the forum I guess. If they do end up wanting to join the forum, they could just ask their parents to help.
Even with verification, the forum did do much better than expected, around 30 users in the first day. I’m guessing that the verification isn’t as big of a problem then.
Thanks for all your help!
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [May 25, 2022, 3:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/11 "2022-05-25T15:56:42Z")
> [@codergautam](#):
>
> I’m guessing that the verification isn’t as big of a problem then.
I’m guessing that they all have email accounts that they aren’t supposed to have. 😉
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [June 24, 2022, 3:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/make-email-optional/227971/12 "2022-06-24T15:57:35Z")
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