Allow new user registrations to be moderated

[Viper007Bond]

Summary

When registration is open, have the option to require manual approval of user accounts before they are granted default role status.

Details / Suggested Implementation

Create a new user role ("Moderated"?) which for all intents and purposes is the same as "Subscriber" (read capabilities).

If opted into, user moderation would assign new users this new role. Administrators would be able to see these users listed under the Users list and click an approve link which would change their role to the default user role (as per the General Settings).

This would also make it easier for plugins to implement private blogs while having open user registration.

See also: #12030

[scribu]

If you have the default user role set to 'Subscriber', then what advantage would there be to having an identical 'Moderated' role?

[Viper007Bond]

Replying to scribu:

If you have the default user role set to 'Subscriber', then what advantage would there be to having an identical 'Moderated' role?

The advantage is certainly less with that set as the default role, but it does provide a way to keep track of who is a legitimate user and who is a potential spammer.

The other thought behind this is making it easier to implement private blogs, either in core or a plugin. Sure, a plugin could create a custom role on it's own for this purpose, but it'd be nice to have a standardized method to do this.

I guess this ticket is a "throw it against the wall and see if it sticks" one. :)

[sillybean]

This would be hugely helpful for bbPress and BuddyPress, where new users can immediately start spamming the forums and activity streams.

[nullvariable]

There are several plugins that offer this functionality.
Examples:

• ​http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-approve-user/
• ​http://wordpress.org/plugins/new-user-approve/
• ​http://wordpress.org/plugins/multisite-user-registration-manager/

If this were to be added to core I would suggest some other form of flag and adding the user as the default role. Then the flag could be run against the user permissions checking instead of creating an additional role. Creating an extra role would likely break the setting for the default role to add users @

Settings > General > New User Default Role

[chriscct7]

There are many good plugins for this that do it very well. This is off into plugins territory at this point. Closing as wontfix