Registration with only ONE field: email

[Marcus]

login/register: email
then you enter the password or click on "Sign up"

• If you enter the password, you are signed in.
• If you click on sign up, an email is sent to the address for verifying, once you click on the email link you are redirected to the "you are already registered" page along with a random password that you can change on-the-fly and a username you should enter.

Fast, nice and user friendly.

 

[GodForum.com]

I agree with this ... START with ENTER EMAIL here and BAM they are registered ... you can THEN ask them for the rest.

 

[Marcus]

I agree with this ... START with ENTER EMAIL here and BAM they are registered ... you can THEN ask them for the rest.

Yes, exactly. But even better is this solution:

1. Let the users create content, even if they are not registered at all.
2. The content is moderated until they sign up!

Imagine you take 5 minutes to write a post, then you do the easy sign up process to not have your work done for nothing.

 

[GodForum.com]

Both a MUST ... especially 1 field email signup.

 

[Dominion]

As far as I can tell, XenForo always lets users log in with either their user name or the email address.

It might be nice if we had a toggle in the ACP to disallow user name logins. Presumably requiring two pieces of non-public information (rather than just one) would help protect forum users' accounts from illicit access.

Apologies if this has already been suggested. (If this setting already exists, please tell me where!)

 

[Lawrence]

I merged these two threads as they are very similar.

Please remember to "like" the first post of this thread,

 

[Dominion]

Thank you, Lawrence. I saw this thread and considered adding my post here, but decided against doing so for a couple reasons. For one thing, my suggestion has nothing to do with the registration process. It's all about login.

And while I do see some merit in Marcus' suggestion for easy registration, I see it as a matter of user convenience. Making it easier for people to take that first step can certainly help boost membership (and hopefully traffic). My suggestion for restricting logins to mail address only, on the other hand, is entirely a security matter. In fact, it would make things marginally less convenient for users.

I also suspect that Marcus' suggestion would require a bit more effort to implement. XenForo would have to have some way of asking people at some point to supply the registration info, so the sequencing of events would have to be reworked to some degree or other. I'm guessing my suggestion would be relatively easy by contrast, as all it does is reduce the range of valid input types from 2 to 1.

If the two suggestions can be rolled into a single overhaul of the registration/login system, then I'm all for it (so long as Marcus' way of doing things is an option rather than the default).

But I'm hoping that my suggestion will be considered on its own merits, as I feel that, generally speaking, security issues need to be given higher priority than issues of user convenience.

 

[RobParker]

Would 1 field even be allowed as isn't DOB legally required for COPPA stuff?

 

[Dominion]

I get the sense that could be an issue with Marcus' suggestion, at least for websites hosted in the States. He also doesn't mention when people are going to be reading and agreeing to the Terms of Use. You really need to have people do that when they register, I think.

Although I wouldn't use it on my site, I like the idea of fast signup in principle. The process described here would be great for, say, a workgroup forum on a corporate intranet. It just needs a bit of tweaking for use on the WWW.

 

[Marcus]

The content is moderated until

- user agrees to the forum rules

It's pretty easy to do that. It's like the "your email bounced, please enter a valid one" message.
But instead the message here is "your content is in moderation until you agree to our forum rules".

 

[Biker]

Ugh, no.

For those sites that require users to be 18, there have to be checks and balances in place. A one field registration would also pretty much kill the spam bot detection as you can now register in a matter of a second or two.

I'm all for making the signup process user friendly, but this one would be a disaster in the making.

 

[Marcus]

(1) The register process is only finished until
- email is confirmed
- user accepts forum rules

(2) Its like the current process. It just "looks" faster as after entering the email:
- the password is auto generated
- user can start creating content

As until (1) is finished, the content stays hidden in moderation. A weekly cron removes all data including moderated content when (1) is not finished.

 

[Biker]

Considering this could result in pages of moderated posts, you've just swamped the moderating staff trying to differentiate between registration posts and other possibly legitimate postings. And as far as I know, there's still no pagination in moderated posts. So how are you going to approve legitimate postings vs those that haven't accepted the requirements? (And we're not going to turn email confirmations back on, it's unnecessary and goes against the user experience you're trying to improve.)

 

[Marcus]

The posts are moderated but of course do not go into the moderation queue, as a moderator is not allowed to publish these posts, before the user finishes the registration process.

After the registration is complete, the posts are published, meaning they are handled by xenforos internal permission system. If you setup permissions to let 0 post users post, then the content will be published. If you setup permissions to moderate 0 post users content, then after the registration process is finished, the content goes to the moderation queue.

 

[Biker]

So, in essence, you're actually taking away from the user experience rather than improving it. And by not requiring a username on registration, you now have a metric butt-ton of posts that are sitting there waiting to be approved with no username other than guest.

This sounds to me an ill thought out suggestion with no thought to the long range ramifications of what a one field registration page would create.

 

[Marcus]

And by not requiring a username on registration, you now have a metric butt-ton of posts that are sitting there waiting to be approved with no username other than guest

This is the idea. The posts are only published after the registration process is finished.

Just around 50% of my registered users post anyway. Your community might be different.

 

[TheBigK]

Is this relevant: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/can-the-registration-process-be-simpler.33723/ ?

 

[Marcus]

This approach here is a bit similar to your suggestion. For the first step our ideas are similar.

The beauty with my idea is that xf can auto-populate
- password > send by mail
- username > depending on which topic a user browses etc. (this will have to be manually fine tuned by the admin in acp)

If you like to do so.