Should You Allow Folks To Register Accounts On Your Blog?

I don’t know about you, but I have not used any blogging platform but WordPress since I made the jump from Blogger. Blogger was a fine platform, but it falls very short in comparison to WordPress. But WordPress comes with its headaches too. WordPress is a very popular platform which means hackers and crackers out there are working overtime to break into WordPress blogs and spam these blog which brings us to the million dollar question:

Should you Allow User Registration On Your Blogs?

User registration allows you to build a more solid community. Folks who go through the registration process are usually more committed to contributing to your community. But not everyone who signs up will be dedicated to improving your community’s experience for everyone else. There are thousands of robot scripts and programs that allow Gray Hat marketers to create accounts on your blog automatically.

Allowing user registration on your blog has its risks too. Not only your DB can be exposed to hackers, you can put a big load on your database, depending on your blogging platform. You also leave yourself to affiliate stuffing attack by enabling user registration. Finally, your blog can be compromised if you take the right security measures if you keep the registration feature enabled.

At the end of the day, you need to figure out if you absolutely need to have folks register on your blog. On most blogs, it is simply not necessary to allow folks to register for an account. You just allow them to comment on your blog, and you moderate the comments as they come. If you are running a hybrid blog (premium content + free content), you may want to keep the registration feature enabled, but you can pull it off without that too.

Here is my recommendation. It is much safer to disable user registration on your blog. Obviously, if you have the resources to manage your blog and protect it against security attacks, then you should go for it. Many super bloggers don’t allow registrations on their blog, which should serve as a proof that enabling this feature brings upon a lot of headaches that are simply not necessary. So do yourself a favor and protect yourself against possible blog attacks at all times, even if it means disabling the blog user registration option.