Why you shouldn’t have a sign up form
Sign up forms suck, not only because they ask useless information, but because their very existence is an annoyance most of the time.
They usually exist on websites because it’s the “default” thing to do.
So you want people to post comments on your blog? Why should they register? Just give them a field that says “name”, and a field that says “comment”, and that’s it! There isn’t even a need for an email field! You can have it their and make it optional, and it might come in handy sometimes if you want to contact someone, but most of the time, like, 99% of the time, it’s not really needed.
Sign-up doesn’t have to be a one-step process. It can be gradual, and it can be done in steps; instead of signing up, it can be more like getting to know the user.
The first time you need their name, ask for it. Like, above a comment box, for example.
Store a cookie on their browser to remember their name. Have a small greeting at the top, or something to indicate that you sorta know who they are, and that it’d be nice to fill in more information.
You can setup a profile for them even without an email or a “login name” or even a password.
You can let them choose a screen name, and enter an email address. But you don’t have to, and they shouldn’t have to either.
The conventional wisdom is: the users should sign up so we don’t get conflicting user ids!!
I say: why don’t you want to handle conflicting user ids?
Just like IRC allows you to join a channel without having a registered nick name, so too you should allow users to sort of “exist” on your site without completing a signup form.
How should you handle conflicting names? Simple: if some name is already registered and an anonymous user choose it as their name too, mark it as “unverified”, or something like that. Just like IRC does.
Maybe you should also allow the “registered” user to have control to edit/delete posts made by an unverified version of his name; maybe only reserve such power to users with high “karma” or “points” or whatever system you might have for determining the importance/trust-ability of some user.
If you do insist to have a sign-up process that avoids conflicting IDs all together, fine, but make sure the registration form is nothing more than the login form: username and password. That’s it! Oh and please, pretty please, no email confirmation.
There are situations of course where you need certain information, and where you need to have the email address validated through a typical email confirmation message. That’s fine, but it doesn’t mean the user should fill a large sign-up form before you recognise their existence.
Have the sign-up process in steps, and you can have sharp boundaries and well-defined “states” a user can be:
Anonymous: no name, no info (typical anonymous)
Stranger: name, and some other info. no email, or email is not confirmed
User: name, confirmed email address, and password
Customer: User with billing information
This is just an example that I came up with right now on the fly. I’m not suggesting you follow it exactly, but I hope you get the idea.
