I'm both reporting an incident specific to this site
and posing some broader questions, toward trying to determine whether it reflects a bug across all Dragonfly installations.

When I attempted to register here, I chose username="bart" and supplied my hotmail address. The "you will receive an activation email..." screen displayed, but the email never arrived.

Where on this site is there a page containing a link labeled "click here if you did not receive the registration confirmation email and wish it to be resent"?
???

I could not find such, and proceeded to register another account. This time, choosing username=bart2, I was presented with an "error" screen stating "that email address is already in use".

How/where can a "locked out" would-be site member contact the staff to request assistance?
???

Apparently a guest-accessible "Contact us" webform is not provided. Even logged in, I still don't see a link. Is the absence of "Contact us" a site-specific configuration choice or a missing Dragonfly feature?

After searching through the code, I see that an admin can supply strings to block either specific email account addresses or entire domains. I haven't traced through the code far enough to understand what happens if:

If the site admin elected to block *hotmail.com
and a registrant supplies a hotmail address...
what happens?
Does the registrant receive a specific error message stating "you must choose another/different email address"
???
Might the error text be too vague?
Would it explain that NO hotmail address will be accepted?

In any event, upon failed registration, the app neglects to "reload the form, with error fields highlighted in red" or some such HELPFUL result. Instead, the poor user is directed to "Go Back" -- only to discover a reset form with all fields blanked or set to default y/n selections.

So, staff should (please) delete the "bart" account...
...but, before you do, can you determine what went wrong?
Does the app generate a log entry to verify that an email was sent?

(I believe it was NOT sent, rather than "hotmail routed it to the junk mail" or "I just missed it")

How often does this happen?
Across DragonflyCMS -powered sites, how many prospective registrants turn away, in frustration?

When does the Dragonfly script send the email?
Immediately, or does it get queued?
Must the queue reach a threshhold before a batch of email is sent?

For the record, I have encountered this identical scenario when registering at VARIOUS DragonflyCMS -powered sites.



Summary:
-- The error-handling for the registration form needs to be more robust (helpful)

-- The app should provide a "re-send account registration confirmation" request link

-- The app should provide for a guest-accessible "Contact us" link, and webform
(webform with CAPTCHA, plus admin ability to enable/disable the link visibility)

-- Perhaps it's partially a template/colorizing issue, but the registration form needs to enable the user to
immediately/clearly distinguish between optional and required fields. As is, failing to notice EACH tiny asterisk character lands a registrant in the "Go Back" (to a reset form) loop -- not a Good Thing

To answer part of your question, hotmail accounts are accepted, and I can verify it works, with the email being sent virtually instantaneously (there is no batching).

However, you're right, the email didn't arrive in your inbox - it probably did arrive in your junk mailbox. Whilst this happens with emails from dragonflycms.org, it doesn't happen with several other dragonflycms sites I have tested. It's probably the characters in the "from" name which hotmail doesn't process correctly.

The other scenario is an erroneus email.

Since the registration lapses within 24 hours, if activation doesn't occur, the only verifiable cause is in your junk mailbox, which would likely have been emptied within 5 days.

This is a common problem with free accounts like hotmail.

bart2 wrote:

Where on this site is there a page containing a link labeled "click here if you did not receive the registration confirmation email and wish it to be resent"?

That would be a nice feature - I thought about that myself this morning when I received a different (non-DF) registration confirmation email that was blank (no link to click to validate)

bart2 wrote:

How/where can a "locked out" would-be site member contact the staff to request assistance? Apparently a guest-accessible "Contact us" webform is not provided. Even logged in, I still don't see a link. Is the absence of "Contact us" a site-specific configuration choice or a missing Dragonfly feature?

Contact is a standard DF module and ContactsPro is a enhanced version that lets you specify different "departments". The admins here probably just opted not to activate that feature so they wouldn't get inundated with messages via that method. PS. I think both have CAPTCHA capability now.

bart2 wrote:

So, staff should (please) delete the "bart" account...

Unvalidated accounts are purged from the user_temp table after 24 hours.

bart2 wrote:

For the record, I have encountered this identical scenario when registering at VARIOUS DragonflyCMS -powered sites.

I don't believe I've ever had this problem and I'm registered on a couple dozen DF sites with free Yahoo e-mail accounts - a couple have gone to "bulk" though, but since they're sent immediately I check there if it's not in Inbox.

Thanks for your replies, folks.

Phoenix, it has been well beyond 24hrs & I just retried, without success.

If you recall, I made an earlier "grumpy" post about visiting add-on sites and finding that many of them required registration (in order to download). I trust you'll understand that repeated failed registration attempts at multiple sites compounded the user frustration I described in that other thread.

Here at dragonflycms.org
attempting to register (today) an account with the username "bart" generated a "username already taken" error message. After selecting a different username, the app *did* accept the hotmail email address. I'll watch carefully to see if the validation email arrives.

I haven't kept notes for all the add-on sites I've visited, but one other site which presented this EXACT problem scenario is dfaddons.com
-=-
Today when I returned there and attempted to (re)register, I probably misremembered the username I originally tried... so it was probably a different username this time. Anyhow, although it didn't get hung up on the username, it did spew an error screen -- "Email address already registered". Again, it's been WELL beyond 24hrs since my prior registration attempt.

I hear ya about the possibility of "email may have been rejected by hotmail due to strange characters", but let's ignore that part of the scenario for the moment.

With these two sites as examples, clearly neither site has deleted the "unvalidated" accounts after 24hrs (as you expected, er, as you described) so I'm reiterating my observation that a registration bug exists.

All I said was totally correct for this site, trust me - the only reason you found that "bart" was already taken because I used it for testing with a hotmail account (and the notification email went straight to junkmail with the ™ scrambled to â„ � ).

I neglected to have the account rejected but it will have automatically dropped off now since the time elapsed is approx 30 hours.

bart2 wrote:

I haven't kept notes for all the add-on sites I've visited, but one other site which presented this EXACT problem scenario is dfaddons.com

I have just checked on DFAddons.com and there are only 2 users that was not verified, they were danoetz and Zrf409, if one of them is the one that you had registered with I can resend you the activation email. Let me know which one.

I did not see anything with bart username at all anywhere.

Thanks for checking, WSG!!!

Zrf409 {--- yep, that's the one!
A resend would be great, thanks.
(I've now added @dfaddons.com to my hotmail 'safe list')

I can also verify that registration mails from my install of the CMS 1. never arrives 2. arrives in junk folder on all hotmail accounts that tried to register at the 2 sites i run with dragonfly on them.