README

Approve new members before they get in. Sign-ups from addresses you trust activate as normal; everyone else waits in a queue until an admin or moderator approves or declines them.

Made for forums with an eligibility rule (a university, a club, a company, a private group), and just as useful against a wave of spam sign-ups.

How it works

Trusted addresses walk straight in. List the domains you trust, such as .edu, uni-freiburg.de or @staff.example.org. Those sign-ups get the normal activation email and carry on as usual.
Everyone else waits. They can sign up, but until they are approved they have exactly a visitor's permissions: they can read what a guest can, and post nothing. A notice at the top of the forum tells them why.
Ask them a question. Put your own question on the sign-up form, such as "Why would you like to join?" or "Your student ID?", optional or required. You read the answer in the queue, in your notification and in your email.
They hear about it. Applicants get an email saying their account is being reviewed, with any extra text you add, for example "reply with your student ID". Everyone who decides gets a notification and an email with the applicant's answer and a link to the queue; each of them can switch either off in their own notification settings.
Share the queue with moderators. Give a group Approve and decline applicants in Admin → Permissions (Moderate section). They get an Applicants page on the forum, linked from their user menu and, while someone is waiting, the sidebar with a count. They see each applicant's username, email, sign-up date and answer, and who approved or declined whom. Admins always have it. A moderator can only decide on waiting or declined applicants, never lock out an existing member or an admin.
One click to decide. Approve sends the applicant their activation link and lets them in. Decline emails them, and they can't sign in. A declined applicant can still be approved later.
Refuse addresses outright. A second list turns addresses away at the sign-up form, before any account is made.
Reserve usernames. Keep admin, moderator and your brand's name for yourselves.

Patterns

One per line, in either list:

Pattern	Matches
`uni-freiburg.de`	that domain and its subdomains, never a look-alike such as `baduni-freiburg.de`
`@zv.uni-freiburg.de`	exactly that domain
`.edu`, `.ac.uk`	any domain ending that way
`*@example.com`	a wildcard over the whole address (`*` and `?`)
`/^staff\..+@example\.org$/i`	a regular expression between slashes

Lines starting with # are comments. Leave the first list empty to approve every new member by hand.

Reserved usernames

A third list keeps names for staff and your brand: admin, moderator, support, yourforum*. Nobody but an admin can sign up with one, or rename themselves to one later, so "dave" can't become "admin" next week. Names aren't case-sensitive, and * works as a wildcard (admin* also covers Administrator and admin2).

This list works on its own: you can reserve names without holding anybody for approval.

Good to know

Existing members are never affected, and nor are members an admin adds by hand. The check happens once, at sign-up; changing an email address later doesn't send anyone back to the queue.
The lock is the permissions, not the email. Flarum signs a new member in as soon as they register, and an activation link can be requested again from the forum. So while waiting or declined, a member's permissions are those of a visitor, whatever happens with their email.
No hint to strangers. Signing in as a waiting or declined member explains why only when the password is right. With a wrong password it's Flarum's usual "incorrect" message, so the form can't be used to find out who applied.
The activation link waits too. Applicants aren't sent the activation link at sign-up; it comes with the approval, so confirming the address and being let in happen together.
Only waiting addresses must answer. A required question is never demanded of a trusted address, since they walk straight in and nobody reads it.
Emails in the junk folder? Gatehouse sends through your forum's own mail settings, like Flarum's password resets. If those land in junk too, it's the sending domain: set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC for it, send from an address on your forum's domain, or use a transactional service such as Mailgun, Postmark or Amazon SES. Admin → Email has a Send Test Mail section, and mail-tester.com scores a test message and says what to fix.
Email is best-effort. If the mail server is down, the applicant is still held; the failure is logged.

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/gatehouse
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Then enable Gatehouse, switch on Hold new sign-ups for approval and fill in the lists.

Updating

composer update ernestdefoe/gatehouse
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Support

Support forum: Gatehouse on ernestdefoe.online
Flarum community: Gatehouse on discuss.flarum.org
Bug reports: GitHub issues

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.

ernestdefoe / gatehouse

Package info

Security

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