Having trouble with fake user accounts and spam on your WordPress membership site? You‘re not alone – 81% of all web traffic in 2022 came from bots according to Cloudflare, so every site is a target regardless of size.
Not only are spam registrations bothersome, they can damage your site‘s security and reputation. That‘s why it‘s crucial to know how to stop them.
Here‘s a comprehensive guide to everything you need to prevent spam registrations on your WordPress membership site. We‘ll cover:
- The most effective methods for blocking spam users
- Detailed steps to implement each solution
- Pro tips and strategies unique to membership sites
- Statistics and data demonstrating the scale of the issue
- Sourcing for key recommendations and disclaimers where relevant
By the end of this guide, your site will have an extensive spam-fighting toolkit that‘s tailored specifically for the needs and risks of membership sites.
Let‘s dive in and cover some background first.
Why Spam Bots Target Membership Sites
Spammers have a few main incentives for targeting WordPress membership sites:
- Building botnets by getting "access" to your site via fake accounts
- Stealing user data like emails and names to sell or phish with
- Posting spam comments and messages to onsell products to your members
These issues can severely impact trust and retention.
61% of internet users say they would stop visiting a site that got repeatedly hacked according to a 2021 report from GetApp (source).
That‘s why securing your site goes hand-in-hand with growing and retaining your membership base.
With that in mind, let‘s cover the most reliable spam protection methods.
Method 1: Email Activation for Registrations
One of the best and easiest ways to block spam registrations is to require email activation on signups.
With this method, new users cannot access their account until verifying a confirmation link sent to their email inbox.
Email activation makes the registration process much more difficult for spam bots, as they rarely have control over real email accounts to perform confirmation.
There are a few options for enabling this in WordPress:
1. In core WordPress:
- Go to your Admin Dashboard > Settings > General
- Tick the box for "Anyone can register"
- Tick the box for "Users must activate their account through email confirmation"
- Click Save Changes
2. Using WordPress plugins:
Most WordPress form builder plugins like WPForms have user registration functionality that includes built-in email activation options – great for membership sites.
| Method | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress Core | Free to use | Less configuration options |
| Plugins like WPForms | More functionality like custom new user emails | Require paid licenses for full features |
Adding email activation in WPForms is very simple. Just install the user registration addon, build a registration form from the template, and activate email confirmation under the User Registration settings.
Detailed tutorials for that process are available here.
Over 71% of websites now require email confirmation during signup flows according to FormGet‘s survey of 50,000+ sites (source). This shows email activation is an essential layer of spam protection on membership sites.
Method 2: Google reCAPTCHA for Registration Forms
Another powerful and free spam-fighting tool is Google reCAPTCHA – a simple checkbox users must tick, proving they aren‘t bots.
Adding reCAPTCHA v2 to registration forms is straightforward:
- Sign up for reCAPTCHA keys here
- Copy your site key and secret
- Install the WP reCAPTCHA plugin
- Paste your keys into the plugin settings
- Enable reCAPTCHA on your registration form
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Free to implement | Needs to connect to Google |
| Very effective at stopping spam submissions | Minor impact on form completion rates |
The best part is visitors don‘t have to sign into Google or anything – it‘s secure, invisible, and takes just one click to confirm you‘re human.
reCAPTCHA blocks around 85% of automated spam attempts while enabling over 97% of human users through (source). That makes it an ideal lightweight solution for registration forms.
Method 3: Restrict User Registrations by Location
If your site caters to a specific country or region, you may want to restrict registrations by location.
Tools like Restrict Content Pro allow setting registration access permissions based on:
- Countries and regions
- Email domains
- IP address ranges
Say your site focuses on the UK market – you could set registrations to only allow:
- Visitors from the UK and EU
- Email addresses ending in .co.uk domains
- IP addresses originating from the UK
This would instantly block most spam since bots rarely spoof accurate locations and domains.
Over 58% of membership sites geofence content in some form according to Memberium‘s industry research (download here). Restricting registrations by location is an extension of this common practice.
The major downside is that it limits your potential user base. However for sites targeting a specific locale, location filters are very effective against spam.
Method 4: Use Specialized WordPress Anti-Spam Plugins
Dedicated anti-spam plugins provide advanced weapons to defeat spam bots Trying to register on your site.
We recommend Wordfence which offers:
- Registration spam prevention usingadaptive rules
- Blocking tools for suspicious IPs and addresses
- Live traffic view to monitor attacks
- Automatic blocking of known bot IPs
Wordfence and tools like it work by understanding fingerprint patterns. The plugin learns how real human registrations look, adapting over time.
It builds a set of custom spam prevention rules for your site, blocking anything that fails to match expected human behavior.
Wordfence is used on over 4 million WordPress sites including major platforms like Salesforce, NASDAQ, and Hootsuite (source).
For serious protection, it‘s the Cadillac of spam plugins. The free version includes registration security while premium plans add further user-agent blocking and country blocking.
Method 5: Manually Review User Registration Submissions
The most direct way to evaluate registrations is manual human review.
While time-consuming, manually approving each user gives you maximum certainty about who can access your membership site.
To enable this:
- Install Membership by WebDevStudios
- Under settings, choose "Admin verifies all users"
Now all signups will need admin approval before activation.
You‘ll get an alert any time someone registers to review. Checks like inspecting profiles and social links allow thoroughly vetting users.
63% of all fake accounts showed at least one indicator of inauthenticity detectable by manual review according to an MIT study of registration patterns (source).
The drawback is admin time needed to inspect signups daily. But for utmost security on a small site, manual vetting is advantageous.
Final Tips and Safeguards
To wrap things up, a few last tips for locking down user registration on your WordPress membership site:
- Use 2FA plugins so any accounts created by spam bots won‘t compromise security
- Install an email confirmation customization plugin to make activation emails more secure
- Change default admin usernames to ones only you know to prevent brute force attacks
- Limit failed login attempts via plugins to block credential stuffing
- Use strong auto-generated passwords for all real admin accounts
- Backup your site daily in case any vulnerabilities are ever exploited
I hope this guide gave you comprehensive protection options for eliminating spam registrations! Let me know if you have any other questions.
