How to enable invite-only registrations and let user know about it?

[ThomasLeister]

Hi!

I've implemented "invite only" registration on my server, which means: No self-registration is possible - users can only register on my server if I have sent them an invite via mod_invites previously.

That means I have mod_invite enabled as well as mod_register:

mod_register:
  allow_modules:
    - mod_invites

Use case: With invitation

All in all, my setup works. If users want to register, I send them an invite. With that invite they click on the web page, and the web page will sometimes redirect them back to their XMPP app, e.g. Conversations for Android. In Converstions they will be able to create their account via their invitation token. And the registration process will be processed by mod_register.

Use case: Without invitation

But: What if anybody tries to register inside the app without a token? The IBR (in band registration) is still enabled. It actually needs to be enabled to give users with invitation the best experience. So setting "access: none" for mod_register is not an option.

Nonetheless: If a user without an invitation tries to use IBR, the user will just see "account could not be registered". I know that this is because the user is missing an invitation token. But the user doesn't know that and the error message doesn't state that, either.

My question: Is there way how I can let the user know that an invitation token is required for IBR? It can be very frustrating to users if they just get an "failed" error message without any explanation.

[sstrigler]

At least as a workaround you could set mod_register's redirect_url to a local page, that explains the situation and maybe also how to obtain such an invite.

[iNPUTmice]

So I think there is currently no good way to discover that a server is "invite only". There isn’t even a good error message for that (which I guess would help at least a little bit; even if we don’t have discovery). But I think there should be.

There is currently a mailing list thread about other feedback with regards to XEP-0401 (because there are other missing bits and pieces in the protocol stack) and I think the only way to resolve this is for you both or at least @sstrigler to join the discussion on the mailing list.