Configuring and managing the sign-up flow with user approval

[Discourse]

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:

1. Enable the must_approve_users site setting.
   

   

2. (Optional) If you want to make your community private, enable the login_required site 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:

1. The user visits your forum and clicks the “Sign Up” button.
   

   

2. The user enters their account details and receives an activation email.

3. 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

1. Moderators receive on-site notifications for pending user approvals.

2. 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 PendingUsersReminder background job, which runs hourly but can be delayed using the pending users reminder delay site setting.

3. Once a staff member approves a user, the user receives an email notification.
   

   

Additional resources

• Configure Discourse for a closed or private community

Last edited by @hugh 2024-07-05T01:35:58Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

[SamRoberts]

Is there a way to pre-approve email addresses for this process. I am using the invitation process, but this still requires my admin approval despite the fact that I have nominated the invited email addresses for membership of the selected group.

[T_Disco (T)]

Re: the must_approve_users site setting.

In light of the information provided at Does changing ‘must approve users’ effect existing users? - #2 by Moin

All existing users are be marked as approved when you turn on that setting.

would it be possible to update the screengrab in the documentation above:

@Discourse

Enable the must_approve_users site setting.

to remove the warning, like the screengrab at:

@deeann

approvenewusers878×117 15 KB

Possibly also adding the text “All existing users are marked as approved when you turn on the must_approve_users setting.” to the documentation to clarify the outcome.