disallow signing in forum before approved
 

I want to keep new forum registrations from being able to sign in before their registration is approved (moderated). How do I do that? I hope it will keep the spam bots from using up my band width. Although I have it set to new users being moderated, they are still logging in and i assume that's where my band with is being sucked up.

any ideas?

Thanks.
amie

AdminCP > Settings > Options > registration options > Moderate New Members They will be in the Users Awaiting Moderation usergroup until they are approved so set that usergroup up how you want it for those users.

I'm doing that. The problem is that that even though they are in the "users waiting" queue, they can still log into the site. i want to prevent that from happening. I think that's how the spambots are stealing the band width.

thanks!

You can "steal" bandwidth whether you are logged in or not. It's just the fact that you are on a page on the site that steals the bandwidth, so I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish.

thanks for clearing that up, lynne. I thought that they had to be logged in to steal the bandwidth. I did take someone's suggestions and put a different question/answer instead of recapta. I also banned several IP addresses. so far no spam registrations and no crashing of the site since i did that.