How To Approve New User Accounts On MediaWiki?

You can disable direct account creation and replace it with an option for requesting user account on your MediaWiki website. Direct account creation can still be kept enabled for Sysops and Bureaucrats to be able to create new accounts by configuring user rights.

The ConfirmAccount extension allows you to disable new account creation and requires the approval of new accounts by a bureaucrat. It also replaces ‘Create Account’ link with ‘Request Account’ on your MediaWiki website.

It can be used in conjunction with the ConfirmEdit extension to use captchas in order to stop flood new account requests.

1. Download Extension here and place then upload it to /exetnsions folder in your MediaWiki site’s root directory.
2. Extract all files and make sure they are located in ConfirmAccount directory in your extensions/ folder.
3. Now add the following code in your LocalSettings.php:

require_once "$IP/extensions/ConfirmAccount/ConfirmAccount.php";

• You will be needing to run the update script to automatically create necessary database tables required by this extension. Otherwise it will show database error to users on request account section.

Also make sure your wiki has write permissions on: $wgUploadDirectory or manually set: $wgFileStore['accountreqs'] & $wgFileStore['accountcreds'] to a writable directory of your choice.

Optional Settings: There are various optional configuration settings you can set up in your LocalSettings.php page. By default, a 50 word biography is required any new user to successfully submit the account request form.

But you can adjust this requirement, by defining minimum number of works in $wgAccountRequestMinWords:

$wgAccountRequestMinWords = 10;

Simply add this line replacing 10 with number of words you want in a user’s biography in order to accept his account request. Also you may set it to 0 to disable it entirely.

You can also set automatic email notification for bureaucrats about pending account requests. Simply use the following code in your LocalSettings.php file replacing the email address:

$wgConfirmAccountContact = 'email@domain.com';

How To Confirm Account Requests?

As a bureaucrat or othe someone with the confirmaccount permission you can access ‘Special:ConfirmAccounts’ page by typing it in MediaWiki search box.

1. Click Review and it will show you the whole form with the users’ data.
2. Review the form, and proceed to creating the account or rejecting the request.

When you select to create the account, the submitted user’s biography will become their user page.