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If all my membership functionality is handled on the front end via an addon like User or Freemember, can I just delete EE's built in member profile templates?

What do you think? Would that help prevent spam accounts?

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  • It's fairly common practice to set the member profile trigger word to a random value in the config.php, so at least bots that target EE installs won't find what they're looking for. Replace all the forms with Zoo Visitor, Profile:Edit, User, Freemember or the like. Mar 17, 2014 at 16:11
  • Yes, I've found password reset forms a bit of a pain when taking that approach. Especially in more recent versions of EE.
    – mjr
    Mar 17, 2014 at 17:56
  • I've never had an issue doing password reset forms with Zoo, P:E, or Freemember. Mar 17, 2014 at 21:47

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The best way I've found to eliminate bot attacks is with the Snaptcha add-on. It's very unobtrusive and supports just about every other third-party user and comment add-on, like Solspace User and Freemember.

If you aren't using EE's Member Profile Templates, it's probably a good idea to hide them. You can't "delete" Member Profile Templates per say, but you can randomize the 'Profile Triggering Word' with a config variable making it impossible to guess. This would prevent spam bots that are trying to exploit the built-in member registration form (index.php/member/register).

Here's an example of this Focus Lab's EE Master Config:

/**
 * Member-based settings
 */
$env_config['profile_trigger']          = rand(0,time()); // randomize the member profile trigger word because we'll never need it

Here's an example from the NSM Config Boostrap:

// Create a random string for the member profile trigger
        'profile_trigger' => '--sdjhkj2lffgrerfvmdkndkfisolmfmsd' . time(),

If you wanted to add this directly into your config.php file, you could use this:

$config['profile_trigger'] = rand(0,time());
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  • Agree with this comment 100% Mar 18, 2014 at 22:25
  • 1
    You can change the profile trigger string right from the control panel (Members > Preferences). I've seen people use % or # to disable it completely. Mar 19, 2014 at 0:09
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No, even if you do delete them. People will custom target to whatever signup method you dream of.

Your anti-spam thoughts should be focused more along the lines of: "What can a freshly registered user do that can be considered spam and how can I change that to at least be harder to do in 5 seconds?"

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  • I was thinking if my custom front end forms had more robust validation at least it would be harder for spam accounts to get initially created? Does that make sense.
    – mjr
    Mar 17, 2014 at 13:57
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Spambots are definitely targeting the default member/register path for EE. I have a client's site that uses third party member registration add-on for EE, but despite hardening that, we were still seeing lots of spambots signing up on the site.

It turns out they were going right to the default member/register path and registering that way. You can either change the location as above, or do what I did, which is just set up an Apache redirect that goes from member/register to the actual registration form/page.

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