You can create a plugin hook for the river creation event

elgg_register_plugin_hook_handler('creating', 'river', 'skip_river_updates');
function skip_river_updates($hook, $type, $item) {
$view = $item['view'];
switch ($view) {
// remove group join updates
case 'river/relationship/member/create':
return false;
break;
//remove creating friendship
case 'river/relationship/friend/create':
return false;
break;
}
}

Thanks a lot! Great Community!

GreaT work, this will help definately with performance as well of the river page load.

I do wonder though, why not have all activity plugins added the standard option in the settings to update the river or not? Seems that there's a 'standard' used with the create / delete so why not with the river update?

Hi iionly,

I've disabled the friend request plugin and it didn't help.

I deleted all the users from the admin section, my validated and unvalidated testusers accounts. But ELGG doesn't give the used email adresses free, it just tells me, that the address has been in used in the past and blocks a new registration with that email address :-(. 

Now I disabled the email validation; Users can sign up and even don't need a manual approval anymore. I thought disabling the email validation would lead to the need of a manual approval by the admin account...?

Hm, I just tested registration with uservalidationbyemail plugin disabled. I was quite surprised about the automatic activation, too. I also thought it would require manual activation when no validation email is sent. I guess the behaviour has been changed at some point (Elgg 1.7 ---> Elgg 1.8?).

I still can't reproduce what you say about email addresses of deleted accounts being blocked. If I delete an account I can use the email address to register again without problems regardless if this account had belonged to an activated or unactivated account. Are you sure you didn't test the registration using an email address belonging to a still existing account?

I'm checking later on that blocked eMail addresses issues again and report here...