Quote:
Originally Posted by TFGuy
And the whole point of registration is, admittedly, a difficult topic and a sore spot for a lot of people, especially for a site like this. What it ends up boiling down to, is A) it's easier to design the site if you know visitors are always going to have a user account (versus hiding or showing different elements on the page based on if someone is logged in or not, multiplied by every single page on the site, and worrying about if an anonymous person could potentially break something by accessing something that only a registered user was supposed to use), and B) if everyone is already logged in when they're viewing content, it's easier for them to thumbs up, comment, etc. which drives community involvement. It's about participation and ease of site design, not numbers.
|
It wasn't a complaint about giving you info, it was a suggestion that you are doing your site - and users - a disservice by locking everything away until after you register. The biggest issue is exposure via Google. The writers on your site are losing that as a mechanism for exposure and they are limited to just people registered to your site for readership.
I've never had a problem with your point A (I do this sort of thing for a living). It's just an if statement and you should be checking input for logins on all form posts or other requests that end up writing to the DB anyway. (You are doing this, right???) For point B, I think it's a missed opportunity. Most sites these days have like buttons and comment fields that are fully viewable to a user not logged in. When users try to use them without having logged in, a signup dialog shows up with a way to create an account. It's a great way to push accounts by showing new users everything they can do before they can do it. The way it is now, new users have to decide whether to bother signing up before they know what's available.
I just think that the site could be made much better and more attractive with just a few tweaks with how you think about signups.