Could you please provide the direct URL where we can see the issue?

I would appreciate it if someone could help me.

Hi,

For the past few weeks I have been getting automated-looking user registrations on my website, recently several per day. The usernames are random strings of letters, and the accounts have no forum activity.

The accounts appear both in wpForo → Members and in WordPress → Users, where their role is Subscriber.

My current settings are:

• WordPress Settings → General → Anyone can register is enabled.
• wpForo Enable User Registration is enabled.
• wpForo email confirmation is enabled.
• wpForo Google reCAPTCHA v2 Checkbox is configured with API keys.
• reCAPTCHA is enabled for both the wpForo Registration Form and WordPress Registration Form (as well as login/reset forms).
• wpForo Spam Control is enabled.
• Ban user when spam is suspected is enabled.
• Advanced and IP-based Flood Protection are enabled.
• Akismet is installed and active.

Nevertheless, bot-looking accounts are continuing to be created.

I also have WooCommerce and the plugin Login & Register Forms – Popup, Slider, Profile & WooCommerceinstalled, so I am wondering whether the registrations might be bypassing the wpForo registration form through another WordPress registration endpoint.

Could you please advise me how to determine which registration route these accounts are using, and whether there is a way in wpForo to confirm that reCAPTCHA is actually being executed and validated when these accounts are created?

I am not a developer, so if you need me to check something, I would appreciate step-by-step instructions.

Thank you!

We don't use wp rocket or EWWW Image Optimizer. But workaround of increasing posts per page is a solid temporary solution. Home page ou category page refreshes instead of displaying the next page.

I've discussed this question with our development team. Based on their feedback, the requested functionality is a custom requirement rather than an issue with the wpForo plugin, so it would require additional customization beyond what we can provide through the support forum.

For this type of customization, I would recommend contacting our paid development team. They can review your requirements and let you know what options are available.

Please contact us at salesgvectors.com, and our team will be happy to assist you further.

Those response times (16–83 minutes for GET requests, with some timing out at 45–86 minutes) are definitely concerning and point to a serious bottleneck. The fact that you're seeing this pattern repeatedly across multiple requests suggests this isn't a one-off issue but rather a systemic problem. The good news is that this is usually diagnosable and fixable once you identify the root cause.

Based on the troubleshooting guide, here's a step-by-step approach to pinpoint what's happening:

1. Install Query Monitor – This is your first diagnostic tool. Add the Query Monitor plugin to your WordPress installation. Once activated, it will show you exactly which database queries are running slowly (anything over 0.1 seconds is worth investigating). Pay special attention to wpForo-related queries and check the total query count on your forum pages.
2. Check for database optimization issues – Your hosting provider mentioned this could be related to table indexes and optimization. Run a database repair and optimization. Most hosting panels (cPanel, Plesk, etc.) have tools for this, or you can use phpMyAdmin to check and repair your tables. Look specifically at wpForo tables for corruption or missing indexes.
3. Review server resources during forum access – While someone is accessing the forum (or simulate traffic), check your server's CPU, memory, and I/O usage. If memory is maxing out or disk I/O is pegged, that could explain the extreme slowness. This information helps determine if it's a resource limitation or a query efficiency problem.
4. Examine Bingbot activity – You mentioned Bingbot is also hitting /forum/. If the bot is crawling aggressively without proper throttling, it could be overwhelming your database. Check your robots.txt and consider adding crawl-delay directives for bots.

Once you've run Query Monitor and identified which specific queries are slow, share those details here and we can dig deeper into whether it's a wpForo configuration issue, a hosting limitation, or corrupted data. What does Query Monitor show as your slowest queries?

It is "wpForo" not Forums.

Sure, this is a chatbot-generated response, so sometimes the information provided may be outdated.

Please confirm that you have already configured your forum as needed. If you have any further questions or need any additional assistance, please let us know.