Verify email addresses confusion - help required clarifying

Question

Craft 5 I have Verify email addresses set to 'yes' and public registration.

Front end form used for reg is created as described here https://www.craftcms.com/knowledge-base/front-end-user-accounts

When registering the user is in a pending state and receives an account activation. They can then verify and become active in their user status.

I may be pedantic or confused but is activating your account intended to be verifying your email? I was expecting an extra stage of verifying email first then activating based on your verification.

Answer 1

I have had this same confusion. As far as Craft is concerned there's really no such thing as "account activation" in the sense we were both expecting - only email verification. It's even more confusing because even using the password reset form on a non-verified account will verify the account - which is fair enough when you think about it, because you are effectively verifying your email address by resetting your password - but you need to be careful about the wording and workflow.

https://github.com/craftcms/cms/issues/2735

https://github.com/craftcms/cms/issues/13051

What I do to have the account activation step is to use User Groups to register people into a custom "Pending" group. Then admins receive an email notification whenever someone successfully verifies their email address asking the admin to go into Craft to review and "activate" their account (by moving them from the Pending user group to a different one). You could of course automate that step if you don't require manual approvals.