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.

1. Not sure of steps to recreate.  All I can say is that I PM’d Steve login credentials.  On the Users->Member Information, I just checked now, the first user (ID # 50) has no display name.

2. It might require a bit of code changing, but I think a better check would be to see if the last visit is blank rather than filling it with inaccurate info.

3. I do see -1’s displayed.  See this link.

4. As more of an update on this, I registered and logged in yesterday as “billm”, viewed the forum yesterday, and still don’t appear in the member list.  One note: I am also using Cloudflare, which is an additional cache.  I could try clearing the Cloudflare cache to see if that has an impact.

5. Nothing else comes to mind.  It was a random question.  If I track it down and it relates to SPF, I’ll let you know.

I’m not sure if this relates, but I see this in my site error_log:

WordPress database error Unknown column ‘topic_status_set’ in ‘field list’ for query SELECT wp_sfwaiting.forum_id, forum_slug, forum_name, topic_status_set, topic_id, wp_sfwaiting.post_count, wp_sfwaiting.post_id
             FROM wp_sfwaiting
             LEFT JOIN wp_sfforums ON wp_sfwaiting.forum_id = wp_sfforums.forum_id
             ORDER BY forum_id made by require, require_once, include, genesis, do_action, call_user_func_array, genesis_do_loop, genesis_standard_loop, do_action, call_user_func_array, genesis_do_post_content, the_content, apply_filters, call_user_func_array, sp_render_forum, sp_process_template, do_action, call_user_func_array, sp_admin_bar_get_waiting, sp_AdminBarGetWaiting, sp_GetAdminsQueuedPosts, spdb_select, W3_Db->query

your last the error, are you sure you are up to date??  the admin bar plugin had this fixed this past weekend…

not sure what cloudflare is but in our experience, none of the caching stuff (except some opcode caches) works well with simple press… they are confused by all the forum content being displayed on a single wp page…

your link generates an error page…  would be interested in where you see -1 for post count…  none should be displayed and its held true with 4.4.5 but perhaps we have regressed somewhere on 5.0 but havent seen it here yet and we get multiple registrations per day… so if you cant get the link working, an image would help…

On updating, no, not up to date.  Will update later tonight or tomorrow.

You can check out Cloudflare when your head is not buried in forum stuff.  Provides performance boost and security enhancement.  Site was down for a short period due to a gateway issue out of my hands, but is back now.  I am running W3 Total Cache, and other than what I’ve reported, SPF works with it.  It really has to because W3 Total Cache is that important to performance.

On the -1, the link in the previous post should work.  If it does not, delete your domain cookies and try again.  I PM’d you login credentials for that site, so you can see the backend too.

with that link, there are no users with -1 posts…   but if you mean in the actual list of members, as a guest, I do not have permission to see member lists…  so is that where you mean?  in the list of members on the members list page?

Logged in, I see many -1 post counts.  Did you log in with those credentials I pm’d you with? 

no chance tonight to log in…  just visited the link…

but if you would just answer my question, I wouldnt have to log in perhaps…

are you seeing it in the list of members on the members page?  as I said, its possible we have regressed from 4.4.5 to 5.0… and we did rework the members list…

okay, found one here displaying… so yeah, a regression from 4.4.5… will get a ticket open…

thanks!

just committed some fixes that should handle the -1 post counts again…

Glad you got it fixed.  Sorry, but I thought I had answered your question.  I always said it was on the front end that I was seeing the -1.  I don’t know of another way on the front end to display the members list other than what I described.

no worries. I just missed the part about it being the members list…  the post count is also displayed in the profile and stats area… which incidentally had the same issue… we totally lost our 4.4.5 fixes…

I updated my SVN to build 7113, and the good news is that the -1 post count on the front is fixed.

The bad news is that before the upgrade, I setup Janrain and activated the Janrain plugin.  After deleting the SPF files on the server and FTP’ing the new files, I got the ‘perform upgrade’ message.  All ok to that point.  Next, I saw some ajax error message, and ended at a screen as if I were not logged in (when I was).  I got back to where I was, and tried the same process again, with no different result.  Somewhere along there I ended up on the front end with a link to upgrade the forum.  Then, when prompted to login again, I reentered my credentials and was taken to the forum menu as if the upgrade had been processed successfully.  Now, the toolbox shows I am at 7113, and I can access the forum as before.

Since previous upgrades went so smoothly, I wasn’t paying close attention to the error I encountered.  Sorry that I can’t provide more coherent info.

Also, I’m not sure if it is premature to comment on the Help bubbles, but here goes: the help on Components->Login and Registration->Member Login refers to “Skin Login Forms” which doesn’t exist as a setting.

janrain plugin??? that is built in to sp and you will have issues if you try to use the rpx/janrain for wp plugin and the rpx/janrain features of sp…

the admin popup help is in a bit of disarray while we figure out what to do with it… It may be going away in favor of another option… or get updated… but will resolve soon…