It is actually your website that allows user to register not the forum. Please see this FAQ:

https://simple-press.com/documentation/codex/faq/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-to/problem-with-post-edit-buttonow-do-i-allow-people-to-register-on-my-forum/

This gets messy. I know it isn’t the fault of Simple:Press, but this might be something to consider for future releases.

When I registered as a test user, the administrator got an email, but the test user didn’t get their password. After some searching, it appears that many mail servers – including live.com / outlook.com / hotmail.com, which host the family accounts I use as test users – don’t like getting email from the default WordPress mail server.

A part solution was to use the Register Plus Redux plugin, which allows a user to create their own email. I say “part” solution, because it allows you to turn off the email part of the registration process for the user, but that may leave casual users feeling uniformed about the status of their registration.

A longer term solution might be to use a domain-specific SMTP server, but I haven’t got to that point yet. I’ve found some plugins that claim to offer this functionality, I’ll look deeper.

Actually, this sucks.

Users get a WordPress dashboard, and it doesn’t seem that there is a way to turn it off. The dashboard has way too much information in it, including the Jetpack plugin details, and announcements about Simple:Press and other plugins.

Again, I know it is not Simple:Press’s fault, but this might be a deal-breaker.

The reason I chose Simple:Press over phpBB was for its integration into the site layout, and that it was a simple plugin that ran within WordPress. It seems that integration may come at a significant cost

You really do need to have a trawl through the Simple:Press setup options.

We know our users tend to not like sending out emails from ‘WordPress’ and we also know that they don’t like users having access to a dashboard in the admin side. Why the WP team insist on these things is beyond me.

So for email visit the forum admin > Options > Email settings. And for blocking user access to the back end visit the Options > Global Settings.

Thanks for your patient reply.

I think I’d better do some deeper studying of the whole WordPress registration and email process, os that I can better understand how Simple:Press fits into it.

My mental model of how it should work may not necessarily be correct

well, we really dont fit into it at all…  as a plugin for WordPress, we sit on top of the WordPress core…  WP handles all the user registration, user login/logout, etc…  We just use the available WP users…

When a user logs into WP (ie your site), they are then ‘logged into’ the forum since we just sit on top…

also, WP lets users in the admin backend… but keep in mind, unless you grant them permissions there is almost nothing they can see and do back there except edit their profile…  And as Andy said, we have given you a method for keeping them out of the backend…

still not sure I understand the cost you are referring to… perhaps you can explain further and we can help you out some more…

All is good.

I had to work around a few issues, but now I’ve got user registration and login working the way I want.

The first problem was that I’d mis-configured my email system in WordPress. Fixed with some help from the wp-mail-SMTP plugin.

The second problem was dealing with the WordPress toolbar. Using the No Dashboard plugin appears to have done the trick.

Finally, I was getting a 404 error on logging out of the forum. It was trying to load a page forum-2 that didn’t exist. I’ve fixed it by redirecting logouts to the site home page.

Now a new user can register for the forum, also getting comment access at the same time, they get a verification check by email, they can log on, and a log off goes to the home page.

Now it is time to look at customising the forum.

check forum – components – login and registration for the proper logout redirect…