WP Capabilities Changed

I’ve been using S2Member for about a year and a half. When a new user subscribes, their default level is Free.

I recently looked at my User info and noticed that for all members who subscribed before March 2013, their “wp_capabilities” appears as:
a:1:{s:10:”subscriber”;s:1:”1″;}

For those who registered in March 2013 or later, it appears as:
a:1:{s:10:”subscriber”;b:1;}

Anyone know what would account for this change? And what does it mean? I didn’t change anything in the registration process.

FWIW — I also noticed that since March, there have been a number of new users whose profile info looks fake. Mismatched combinations of cities, states, and countries; names and email addresses that appear to be randomly generated strings of letters, etc.

Thanks.

@mrmacscience

Anyone know what would account for this change? And what does it mean? I didn’t change anything in the registration process.

I believe this is a change with WordPress’s storage functionality. This is essentially saying the same thing. The only difference is that s:1:”1″ means that there is a string with 1 character being stored, and the character is one; b:1 means that it’s storing a boolean 1, aka TRUE. They both equate to the same thing when you check them for being TRUE or FALSE (as WordPress will be). The only difference is the way it looks.

@mrmacscience

FWIW — I also noticed that since March, there have been a number of new users whose profile info looks fake. Mismatched combinations of cities, states, and countries; names and email addresses that appear to be randomly generated strings of letters, etc.

The best thing you can do to prevent spam registrations are to turn off the ability for Users to set their Passwords without receiving an email from you first, available in this part of the Dashboard:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› General Options -› Registration/Profile Fields

Here’s that part of the Dashboard (click to see full image):

You might also want to switch to using a Free Registration Pro Form along with enabling an Captcha on this form to keep bots from creating accounts as well:

Dashboard -› s2Member® -› PayPal® Pro Forms -› Free Registration Forms

Thanks for your quick reply, Bruce. Glad to know it’s nothing to worry about. I do use the password-by-email and Captcha for registration.