Support Forum

Please bear in mind that my knowledge of MS is pretty limited and Steve may have to contradict something I write here - or I might be just plain wrong! - but I will have a go from the perspective of a normal single site install.

1. Two things to say about the Newest Members list first - (a) a new registrant will NOT appear in that list until they actually visit the forum - they are added to the list at that first visit; (b) the list is also cached and refreshes about once an hour so sometimes they may not appear immediately.
   I am concerned some of your new users have no display name however as this should be created at the same time as the new user registration and is based upon your option setting in the Profiles > Options admin panel. There are all kinds of checks in the code to ensure that a display name is created if the user themselves do no supply one falling back on duplicating their chosen login name. If you can recreate this would you kindly give us the steps to do so?
2. When the forum 'sfmembers' entry is created - either for existing users when SP is first installed or for subsequent new registrants - the last visit date is set at the timestamp of creation (i,e., 'now'). While I would agree that this is inaccurate, the last visited date is used internally for more than just display and informational purposes. Primarily it is used to create each users list of new and therefore unread posts and it is important that it be filled.
3. We do indeed - using a random number algorithm - remove a post for each user with a -1 post count so you need to watch them! Well... not really. A -1 is used to denote a registrant who has never actually paid a visit to the forum. Again this is a fairly important internal marker for other events and code within SP. For example - it is the move from a -1 to zero (i.e., a genuine first visit) that triggers their name to be placed in the newest members list.
   However - you should not see -1's displayed on the front end so that might be a bug. Can you tell me where you are seeing this please so we can look into it?
4. Steve - any ideas? If you can log in and see the forums as that user then there is no doubt it is a bona-fide account. What about the caching you said you gave active? Could that be the reason?
5. None whatsoever. And unless this is some MS thing there is no such file as wp-index.php. The whole registration process is pure, core WordPress. All that SP does is act on the event to create the sfmembers table entry and some other bits of data to set the new registrant up as a potential forum user. Everything else is untarnished WP. Unless you have any other plugins active that may do something fired by the same event.