Why would someone want to be a “subscriber”?

On your site, are you allowing visitors to subscribe to comments, posts, etc.?

I believe so. So then, what does that mean? WordPress says it means they “can only manage their profile.” But your comment would seem to suggest that there is something they are going to receive: a “subscription” to comments, posts, etc. What does that mean exactly? The subscription goes where? They get an email every time there is a new post, comment, etc.? Sorry if this is such a basic question, but it was not clear to me from the WordPress documentation.

So I direct you properly, please tell us:
– Are you using plugin for it? If so, Which plugin?
Or
– Is it a feature of your theme? If so, which theme?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 10 months ago by t-p.

I very honestly don’t know the answer to those questions, or where to look to find the answer to those questions.

If it’s any help, I am using the WordPress “Twenty Seventeen” theme, and not very many plug-ins. Possible culprits could be the WPForms Lite plugin, or the Custom Twitter Feeds Pro Personal plug-in.

I’ve looked through the settings on WordPress and these two plugins and don’t see anything that I can tie to a subscription.

Can I ask you, is a “subscription” a standard WordPress feature? If so, where is it found?

Twentyseventeen does not have that builtin feature.

Are you using Jetpack plugin?

I’m not using Jetpack.

Here are all my active plugins: Akismet Anti-Spam, All In One SEO Pack, CSS Hero, Custom Twitter Feeds Pro Personal, Site Kit by Google, WPForms Lite

I find this confusing that this may have nothing to do with WordPress itself because it’s shown in my WordPress dashboard under “Users” which includes a link on the top right of the page called “Descriptions of Roles and Capabilities” that is written by WordPress (see my original post above).

Here is a screenshot of what I’m describing: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gawv7gbzygdnawi/Screenshot%202020-01-26%2013.14.27.png?dl=0

Subscription plugins allow subscribers to change/update their profile.

To find out exactly what your plugin allows, I recommend asking at that plugin’s dedicate support. So please identify exactly which plugin you are using and then post in that plugin’s dedicated forum via its page so the plugin’s developers and support community can help you with this.

I believe OP is referring to the native WordPress registration.

New to WordPress. I just received an email indicating that a new user registered with my site in the role of “subscriber.”

I’m puzzled as to what motive anyone might have to be a subscriber vs. a contributor or author.

The puzzle is simply explained as thus:

“Subscriber” is the DEFAULT user role assigned to anyone who registers on a WordPress site with registration enabled, unless you have specifically changed this. And during registration, people are not presented with the option to select their preferred role — again, unless you’ve specifically setup your site as such.

So everyone who registers on your website will have the “Subscriber” role by default.

I’m puzzled as to what motive anyone might have to be a subscriber vs. a contributor or author. According to WordPress, a subscriber is “somebody who can only manage their profile.” What good would managing your profile be, if you’re not going to use it to comment, etc.?

I think there’s some misunderstanding here as to what “contributor” refers to.

The various WordPress roles (Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor & Subscriber) relate to permissions to publish NEW CONTENT (posts, pages, etc), manage existing content, and manage other users, and configure the entire WordPress website.

They have nothing to do with the ability to post comments.

Every registered user (irrespective of role) can post a comment. And, by default, even unregistered users can comment: they only have to provide their name and email address, but they don’t become registered users automatically after leaving a comment.

With all that said, I’m 99.999999999% sure this is a spam registration.

See: https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/tips-tricks/how-to-defeat-wordpress-spam-users-identify-delete-and-prevent-future-registrations

Thank you @t-p for your insight and advice.

And thank you @gappiah, that is super-helpful and clarifying!

So, George, I understand your answer and it seems to solve my confusion.

Of course, this does raise a couple of followup questions for a newbie such as myself:

What is a spam registration? Is there some additional form of spam that will follow from this, other than this email address that’s been added to my dashboard?

Is there any harm in it and any action I should take, or are they harmless and to be ignored?

If it’s spam, why wasn’t it blocked by the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin? Is there some other better spam plugin I should buy that would be more effective?

What is a spam registration?

In almost all cases, they’re just spam bots preemptively getting around WordPress’s “must be registered and logged in to comment” anti-spam system.

Is there any harm in it and any action I should take, or are they harmless and to be ignored?

Do you need user registration on your site? If not, you can put a stop to this simply by switching that off.

Take a look at Settings > General in your site’s Dashboard, and uncheck “Anyone can Register” and save, this won’t affect any subscriptions system you may be using, but it will stop those registrations you’re referring to.

Next, at the Users section of your site’s Dashboard, it’s safe to delete any User there listed as a “Subscriber”. Don’t worry about the role’s name, WordPress itself doesn’t even send subscription content. It was the most limited role, created for subscription plugins hence the name, but none use it. I tried to convince the developers to change the role’s name, but it appears to have been denied: https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/40599

So, to re-cap, switch off “Anyone can Register” at Settings > General, and delete “Subscribers” under Users. This will stop the problem, and it won’t affect any subscription system in the least. ??

If it’s spam, why wasn’t it blocked by the Akismet Anti-Spam plugin?

Akismet blocks comment spam and contact form spam, it does not block spam registrations.

If you do need to keep user registration open, try https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/stop-spammer-registrations-plugin/

Thank you, @macmanx, what a clarifying and useful answer!

I’ve followed all of your advice.

I think you’ve just promoted my knowledge from WordPress Level 1 to WordPress Level 2!

Awesome! I’m looking forward to that getting to level 3 next. ??