Controlling account creation

BOINC has two mechanisms for creating accounts:

• RPC-based: The create_account RPC. This is used by BOINC Manager and by account managers.

• Web-based: the user fills out a web form (join.php or create_account_form.php). This has the advantages that you can use ReCaptcha (to prevent mass account creation by spammers) and you can customize it however you want.

By default both mechanisms are enabled.

Disabling account creation

To disable all account creation, edit config.xml and add

<disable_account_creation>1</disable_account_creation>

Note: 1 = True, 0 = False.

To disable RPC-based account creation, add

<disable_account_creation_rpc>1</disable_account_creation_rpc>

Restricting account creation via 'invitation codes'

You can restrict account creation to those who present an 'invitation code'.

To do so, add to the file html/project/project.inc a definition for a PHP constant INVITE_CODES as a ​Perl-Compatible Regular Expression (PCRE) for the set of invitation codes. For example:

define('INVITE_CODES', '/yohoho|blunderbuss|!grog4U/');

This allows someone to create an account if they enter any of the words 'yohoho', 'blunderbuss', or '!grog4U'.

INVITE_CODES applies to both web and RPC-based account creation. To restrict only RPC-based account creation, use

define('INVITE_CODES_RPC', '/yohoho|blunderbuss|!grog4U/');