if you want anyone to be able to register for the forums, yes you do, and if you do then yes anyone can register, wordpress and bbpress use the same userdatabase.
Otherwise, you are looking at a manual registration system, which is quite easy to do, just use one of the many form plugins available – contact form 7 (and add the flamingo plugin) is very popular, and add users.
or if it is bots registering, use one of the many anti bot plugins available eg captcha to prevent bots registering.
Thanks! I’m thinking it’s bots. I’ll look into antibot plugins.
Robin, about using a form for manual registration – where would I put the form? Is there a specific page that bbPress creates where I’d need to put the form? I use Gravity Forms. Thanks!
You’d just create a page – say called ‘registration’ and put the form in there. The form would mail you and you’d go into dashboard>Users>create new to create a new one.
If you are using bbpress widgets, then there is an area within the widget setup that lets you put in the registration url, which is the permalink of the page you set up.
you’re welcome – come back if you need further help 🙂