Geeklog Forums

I don't like the way new user registration works right now.

The visitor puts in their username and email, and they get an email with a randomly generated password. Then, they have to revisit the site, login with the password, then after that have to go to their account and change their password and enter in additional info.

What I want to see happen, is that when they are creating a new account, they put in their username, fulle name, address, additional info, and whatever password they want. They still get an email, but this time it only contains a link to activate the account.

What I'm seeing is a lot of people signing up, but never logging in.

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www.antisource.com

Are they actually getting the email when they sign up? Try setting up a dummy account using a hotmail account to see if the email is being sent out. Thats just a thought with the info you provided.

Yes they are getting it, I just tested it a few days ago.

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www.antisource.com

Any luck with this Rick? I am doing some research myself on how to get this to work properly...got a few other forum links to research/check, but.....currently have people not getting the registration email...(I know this since I've gotten a couple emails from people telling me this, I couldn't reproduce it...but it apparently is happening)....so I'd like to change the registration to allow for immediate registration if possible....

if these people don't want to login to your site after having registered, why would they bother to activate their account if you make these changes? There is no difference that i can see here... they still get an email, and they still have to come back to your site.

Let's say you accomplish your desired changes, there is still no reason why a new user should log in unless there is desirable content inaccessable otherwise--that will never change.

immediate registration without having to activate via an emailed link or without any email at all is no different than allowing anonymous access to all parts of your site that are allowed to logged in members.
Doing this allows spammers, for example, easy(er) access due to the lack of accountability via a valid email address..
The better way to go is to continue trying to fix the email.

It is based on the premise of "making the sale". I learned this many years back when I first was setting up the store on my hawbuster site (a lure manufacturer). While having my site critiqued for SEO on another forum, one gentlement messaged me and pointed some non-seo flaws the site I had concerning product display.

On a store, you need the visitor to be able to access what they're looking for right away. When they have found what they are looking for, they need the option to buy it right away. Never force the visitor to go searching for what they want - there is a very real statistic that shows that the average person will leave a site within 30 seconds if it is A. taking too long to load or B. does not immediately present to them something they want or C. is not easy enough to navigate to go to something they want.

Now I'm not charging people to join my site, but I'm still considering my members a revenue potential. As far as registrations are concerned, it really is just for the forum - which is the Sticky component of my site. I need people to sign up and contribute right away, which will draw in other people to do the same. Taking into account the convenience factor, and the thousands of competing forums of similar theme, I want to make sure I get those people right into the forums as quickly as possible.

It's all about marketing.



I agree. URL Activation is the way to go - not only does it confirm their email account, but it also immediately brings them right back into the site (and with many forums, they already logged in during registration and just needed to click that URL).

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www.antisource.com

Some access to parts of a site (i.e. forum) are conducive to having posts written and identified by a username...what I am getting at is more of having a user being able to input their username, password, and email address and be registered. Period. It's that same "marketing" thing that Rick is referring to...or as he put it, "making the sale"....same exact concept.

SpamX module is there and active for a reason....if someone wants to be an @$$hat, then that's what the "ban" feature is for. We could argue about what you prefer and what I prefer til the cows come home....but, I'd like people to be able to register and immediately be able to log in and past if need be. If I find an email address is mistyped or not correct, I will simply lock or delete the account after informing them (if they are active on the forums at least)

I read this topic a little while earlier, and after installing G2 (gallery 2) I was kind of impressed with their new registration module.

Maybe it is worth to have a sneak peak on how they did it for GL2.

I really liked the option where the user just gets a confirmation link on email (the initial suggestion of Rick in his first post), but they added the random number generator to it, so it at least should forcome automated engines of registering - spamming - deleting the account in one go.

Just my

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