phpBB: Top 5 Fully Customized Registration Features

phpBB is fully compatible with UTF-8 (Universal Character Set Transformation Format – 8 bit), which ensures its compatibility with almost all existing developing languages. phpBB comes with a number of various advanced features, such as security, anti-spam, attachments, data managements, caching, styles, permissions, search systems and other useful plugins. With these user-friendly features, various companies create forums for their websites.

Registration in phpBB Forums

The various registration features of phpBB provide the users of the forum a safe registration processes. Five fully customizable registration features offered by phpBB are:

1. COPPA Registrations

This feature concerns the registration of children under the age of 13 on the forum. The COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998) is a United States federal law. Under this law, personal information of children less than thirteen years of age is collected online by entities under US jurisdiction. COPPA, which is mostly used within the United States, needs parental approval for children below thirteen years of age to register in the forum.

2. Limit Registration Attempts

phpBB restricts the number of attempted registrations in the forum, with the help of CAPTCHA (Completely Automatic Public Turning test to tell Computers and Humans Apart). CAPTCHA is a software program that generates minute tests that are easy to answer for humans but not by automated programs. phpBB uses CAPTCHA in its forum registration process in order to prevent its misuse by automated programs.

3. Min/Max Username & Password Length and Limited Username Characters

phpBB ensures that the username and password you set for registration are not too long. There is a preexisting maximum and minimum limit length of the username and password. Characters used in usernames are also limited to a certain set of characters, such as alpha-numeric or ASCII. There are multiple presets available as well.

4. Password Complexity and Force Password Change

You can set the complexity of your password with the aim of securing your account. The complexity of your password can be increased by adding at least one numeric character and special character. You should avoid simple passwords as they are more prone to hacking attacks. The users of the phpBB forums can be compelled to reset their password before they can login again by the chosen moderator and administrator of the board.

5. Permit or Prohibit Duplicate Emails

There is an option in phpBB forums to either permit or prohibit multiple user accounts from having the same email address.

phpBB enables you to set up an unlimited number of forums. You can use these five features to protect your phpBB forum registration. You can also create users, moderators and user groups with varying permissions.