Sounds like you have very slowly connection to your database. This is very often the reason for shared hosting.

Which version of Elgg 2.3 have you installed exactly? Is it the latest one? It's been quite some time but if I remember correctly there was some error with the name field of the message sending form not working as intended. The other reason for the same problem was a buggy version of some hype***** plugin (not sure if it was hypeWall or hypeInbox or some other) that resulted in the member search of the message form input field to fail. When you say you have tried with 3rd party plugins disabled have you REALLY tried with ALL of them disabled (including a possible theme plugin)? I don't deny that the bug you descibe did exist at some time in the past but it has been fixed by now definitely.

There was no spam email sent to your mail account directly from the spammer.

Instead the following happened:

1. The spammer registered an account here on the community site,
2. The spammer sent you (and maybe other site members) a private message here on-site (in no way knowing your mail address),
3. Default notification settings of the community site is to send the member an email notification if a new private message arrived on-site,
4. You and maybe others got this notification,
5. Spam detection (or a site member reporting the spammer) resulted in the account used for spamming with private messages was banned/deleted.
6. When you visited the community site looking for the spam account it was already dealt with.

Of course, it would be cool if the spammers would get identified before they spam. Unfortunately, you can only identify them reliably if they already have done something wrong. Fortunately, it happens very seldomly that the site message system is misused and members' email addresses are definitely not fetched.

yes its under free host for build purposes before it goes to dedicated host

For Elgg 2 there's Platform to setup and test (free trial) your app before deploying on your production server.

Coming soon Elgg 3...

Invitation code in your PM already ;)

I think you haven't fully understood what I was trying to say...

I was trying to explain that BOTH the Uservalidationbyemail AND the Aalborg theme plugin are indeed bundled plugins. And being both bundled plugins (forget about the plugin version numbers for these...) they should work together without causing issues like the one you describe.

I suspect it's rather ANOTHER plugin (NOT bundled with Elgg core) that might cause the problem with the registration page / validation emails. Or it's some other kind of config that might be not fully correct. That's why I suggested to make sure that all 3rd party plugins you have installed are really compatible with the Elgg version you use. For testing purposes you could temporarily disable all 3rd party plugins and test if the account registration is stil not fully working. You could also look into the error log on the server to see if there's anything logged that might indicate what the problem might be.

Howdy Mr iionly. I got the  Uservalidationbyemail plugin working. I did as you suggested. I disabled all 3rd party plugins then enabled and checked each one. after a couple hours of that, I decided to take a break and work on tweeking the pages. In opening other files (such as view/default/pages) to do my tweeks I came across a 2nd file named  Uservalidationbyemail. I was like "what the hell is that doing there." I decided to run a search of the file thru my system and lo and behold there was 3 more copies of the Uservalidationbyemail plugin. So 5 total copies including the one in the MOD file. I deleted them all then reinstalled plugin back in MOD file. I searched the system to see if the issue occurred again. I found no other copies so I tested the plugin and every thing worked just fine. I have no idea how 4 copies of the plugin got into 4 different files since its part of the bundle so I just wrote it off as a twilight zone thing. lol   

I also took care of the RSS issue. With that said, The Swamp is up and functioning properly so I would like to thank iionly and RvR for all their support assistance in the issues I was having.

If youre a person that likes fishing, feel free to join The Swamp. Its free (plus I could use some members LOL)  http://crawdaddytraps.x10host.com/community/      Later Y'all

The dumbest way is:

• Download Translation editor v6.1 / Upload / Activate
• Do to http://crawdaddytraps.x10host.com/community/translation_editor/en/core
• Find 'Activity' and rename it.
• Run 'Flush the caches' on the Administration page.

The developer's way is:

• Create your custom plugin, or use My skeleton plugin for Elgg 2.
• Make file:

mod\my_plugin\languages\en.php

With this content:

<?php


return [

    'activity' => 'Your custom name for Activity here',

];

• Save and run 'Flush the caches' on the Administration page.

Read docs.

Thank you Mr RvR. I like to do things the right way so I will try the developers way first. And sorry bout the link. I forgot you have to login to view the site.

Good choice!