Thread

Over the last week or so my server has been experiencing extremely high loads and frequent crashes. It has been difficult to track down the source of the problem but after a lot of back and forth with developers and my server admin I believe the problem is that many thousands of new members are being registered every day on an EE based site on the server. That site went from a few thousand members to 130,000 over the last week.

I attempted to disable new user registration in the admin but I am getting an error when I do that and the setting won’t take. Back to the admin problem later but right now I have an urgent need to turn off registration. Is there a field in the database I can alter directly to achieve this?

I’d like to add that this is an urgent problem. I don’t know how to get help with this other than posting in this forum. Did EE ever implement paid support options?

Hi Ditchmonkey,

Sorry to see you’re experiencing some issues with the site right now. Does the recent influx of traffic mean your site has recently become very popular, or is it due to spam?

To answer the question you’re asking, yes, you can turn off member registrations from outside the CP. Just add the following line to your config.php file:

$config['allow_member_registration'] = 'n';

You may also want to give this article in the User Guide an overview: Handling Extreme Traffic with ExpressionEngine

We haven’t yet release Private Support to the public, but that’s in the works, and we’re really excited about what we’ll be able to offer in the near future! Please keep your eyes on the blog for announcements about it.