Posted by techgy on June 22, 2008 at 3:34pm
I'm using Drupal 6.2 to support a forum and I'd like to control the number of accounts that a single individual can create.
Is there a module or a method that can be employed to control this?
I'm using Drupal 6.2 to support a forum and I'd like to control the number of accounts that a single individual can create.
Is there a module or a method that can be employed to control this?
Comments
I'm not sure if this could
I'm not sure if this could be done. Accounts are based around email addresses, which are easily obtainable, so one person could create multiple accounts. You could possibly create a module that would add an access rule to deny signups from an IP that has been used, but this is not likely to be effective. Or a cookie could be placed to recognize that a user has been logged in and prevent them from creating a new account, but again this could easily be worked around.
Maybe someone else has some thoughts on this? I don't know of any way for Drupal (or any other web system) to recognize an individual person with enough accuracy to be useful.
No version for 6 yet
But if you have any coding skills, might want to have a look at http://drupal.org/project/false_account.
Good find. :) I'm still not
Good find. :) I'm still not sold on it personally as the cookie approach would create false positives whenever multiple people (legitimate accounts) use a single computer. Anyone who is determined to create multiple accounts could simply disable cookies or use multiple browsers.
Very good points, unlikely
Very good points, unlikely to stop anyone other than a basic user.
I've never actually used it for real. Before deciding to go with Drupal 6, I'd set up a test site using Drupal 5 and remembered the module from then. It did flag me as having multiple accounts which was simple enough to authorise.
Ditched Drupal 5 after a couple of days so haven't looked at the module since (about 6-7 months ago).
Probably the best method is
Probably the best method is a manual check of new users.
Realizing that Drupal uses Email addresses to control accounts, you couldn't apply twice if you used the same Email address. It would be easy though to just use a different Email and create another account.
Thanks for the thoughts everyone. It was just an idea.