It has come to my attention that some people trying to register new accounts on the site aren't receiving the email the forums automatically send out so you can validate your email address. This is obviously an issue as you need to validate your email address in order to use most of the site and forums.

I have several test accounts across many different ISPs and ISPs such as Google Mail and Hotmail don't seem to have any issues, some others do, such as GMX. I've done lots of searches across most of the popular blacklists that these ISPs use and the email server's IP does not appear on any of them. The other issue might be that some ISPs automatically blacklist or blackhole forum registration emails or servers that send out large quantities of emails.

I have changed the method by which the activation emails are delivered this evening and my tests have gone well so far; the accounts I have that originally didn't receive the activation emails now do.

I'm hoping that this should resolve the issue for a large number of people. If you registered today and haven't received the validation email then login to the forums and click the "Resend validation" link at the top of the page. If you tried before today then your account will have been automatically removed and you'll have to sign up again.

For those wondering why email validation is in place there's two good reasons: one, it considerably reduces the amount of spam scripts that circulate the site with their viagra messages and two it provides a good deterrent against abusive members who get banned. If we can ban them a lot faster than they can make new email accounts it becomes a lot easier to manage them and they'll eventually get bored.