Registering and login procedure for non technical end-users

[DanielGarneau]

I went on line with a PhpBB forum (currently 3.1.10) in May of last year. Over the course of time, there have been I'd say around 20 to 30 or so users that have been deterred from engaging the forum due to access complexity.

How do other forum software rate in terms of log-in and access complexity for users not technically oriented?

 

[LeadCrow]

The simplest login methods will be using an existing identity provider (google signin, facebook connect, steam...).

Its a 1-click process fetching all needed information to complete signup without the trouble of inputting them or a separate password for your site. Its handy on mobile since users are often already logged into those.

 

[DanielGarneau]

The simplest login methods will be using an existing identity provider (google signin, facebook connect, steam...).

Its a 1-click process fetching all needed information to complete signup without the trouble of inputting them or a separate password for your site. Its handy on mobile since users are often already logged into those.

Thank you LeadCrow. Your answer led me to post another thread: Login in to Forum through Social Media Accounts. Both questions are interelated.

However I still do wonder if the grass is greener with some of the other forums out there. I had assumed that Xenforo would be a lot better, but I don't really want to pay for my forum software, if I can avoid it, and I read a post lately where someone complained about the login procedure with even Xenforo, which I tend to perceive as one the most user-friendly forum software, judging from my user-experience at TAZ.

Thanks for whatever input anyone might wish to provide on this.

 

[DanielGarneau]

It doesn't get much easier than this. If they have problems with this then they will most likely have problems participating on a site.
Yes, it's a paid script (IPS) and it has profile completion ability built in (as an encouragement to complete them) but initial sign is is fairly well done.

Hello Tracy, You say it is a paid script. What's the script's name? I mean, the product, or mod...?

 

[haqzore]

Hello Tracy, You say it is a paid script. What's the script's name? I mean, the product, or mod...?

https://invisioncommunity.com

 

[Pete]

And yet, this is actually simpler than Facebook's signup. So I don't trust the "the setup is too complicated" argument as much as I should.

 

[DanielGarneau]

IPS
They've made many improvements in the signup process. XenForo is not bad either, but IPS seems to be a little more streamlined in the current version.

Tracy Perry, thank you. I'll look into it as soon as I can manage the time to review my whole signing in and login procedure, and of taking the necessary measures. In the meantime, I removed some of the steps that I required users to take for protecting my actual forum from automated spammers and the likes.

 

[DanielGarneau]

And yet, this is actually simpler than Facebook's signup. So I don't trust the "the setup is too complicated" argument as much as I should.

Hello Pete, I decided not to hold back any longer with whatever steps are required to take in order to make the login procedures easier on end-users.

 

[LeadCrow]

Asking users for less information before they can participate can also help. You could ask them later to 'complete their profile' (an option with IPB iinm).

 

[Ramses]

If they have problems with this then they will most likely have problems participating on a site

That's the point, if they are not able to complete a simple registration form, they mostly are also failing in additional tasks like posting, or they forget their password, etc. . In my experience they are time waster and no real asset to a community.

 

[haqzore]

That's the point, if they are not able to complete a simple registration form, they mostly are also failing in additional tasks like posting, or they forget their password, etc. . In my experience they are time waster and no real asset to a community.

We shouldn't be so quick to absolve ourselves as the cause of these issues.

Sometimes the onus is, and should be, on admins and developers to simplify and make things more user friendly.

 

[Ramses]

Sometimes the onus is, and should be, on admins and developers to simplify and make things more user friendly.

Sure, fully agree.

 

[MarkFL]

That's the point, if they are not able to complete a simple registration form, they mostly are also failing in additional tasks like posting, or they forget their password, etc. . In my experience they are time waster and no real asset to a community.

I've been kind of waiting for someone to point this out...a user unable to complete a registration form is going to have issues doing pretty much everything else. If they're that utterly incapable, I would rather they move on and become a problem for someone else. At some point, we should be within reason to expect of our users some bare minimum of ability to complete simple tasks. That's how I honestly feel, at any rate.

 

[LeadCrow]

You could be right if all forms of contributions to a forum an admin asks for and expects were equal. Users' ability to contribute in better ways improves over time, although it could remain asymmetric (users asking more than answering, taking more than giving, downloading rather than uploading...).

I feel it'd be a mistake turning away any user who found your site interesting enough to consider joining when they could've remained a passive visitor. They could become active years after signup, and even asking dumb questions around would be interesting outcomes of streamlining the signup process (interaction with other users helps fit in).

 

[haqzore]

You could be right if all forms of contributions to a forum an admin asks for and expects were equal. Users' ability to contribute in better ways improves over time, although it could remain asymmetric (users asking more than answering, taking more than giving, downloading rather than uploading...).

I feel it'd be a mistake turning away any user who found your site interesting enough to consider joining when they could've remained a passive visitor. They could become active years after signup, and even asking dumb questions around would be interesting outcomes of streamlining the signup process (interaction with other users helps fit in).

1000% agree.

 

[MarkFL]

You see, I've never understood the whole "registration is difficult" thing (with the exception of some difficult to read CAPTCHA schemes of the past). In most cases that I've seen, we're talking about coming up with a username, a password, and supplying an email address. You answer a simple question and/or click an "I am not a robot" checkbox, and you click to accept the rules. You wait some ten seconds or so for the email to arrive and you follow the confirmation link.

It requires roughly the same level of expertise as starting a new thread or sending a private message. While it may be possible that a user who finds these things difficult may at some point blossom into a contributing member of the community, it has been my experience that users who find navigating a forum to be difficult complain and moan and first, require time to be taken to hold their hand through rudimentary processes, and ultimately disappear even when treated with the utmost of patience. The problem isn't so much with the software, but with the user in such cases.

I'm not so desperate for users that I'm going to worry about catering to those who are too lazy to figure out how to type information into input fields and click submit buttons. I do agree that things should be user friendly, but at some point the users themselves bear some responsibility to figure out how things work.

 

[MarkFL]

Yes, that's why I preceded the text you quoted with:

In most cases that I've seen,...

I also think it's best to allows users to complete their profile after the registration process, at their leisure. Give them time to recover, catch their breath, even convalesce, after the grueling Herculean task of forum registration.

 

[zappaDPJ]

I have to say I've encountered numerous forums that I've really struggled to register with and it's an alarmingly high number. Just some of the problems I've encountered:

• Forums that have registration turned off, but not by design (In one case I recently came across, turned off for over three years ).
• Multiple captcha attempts that I can't get past.

• Not knowing the capital city of Columbia is 'Bogotá' rather than 'bogata' or that two plus two equals 'four' and not '4', a problem I've encountered so many times.
• Block puzzles asking me to spot signs, cars, shop fronts and all manner of ambiguous items.

• And then there's that confirmation email that may come sometime between now and never and probably delivered to your spam folder when it arrives.

In my opinion there are two sides to this debate

 

[DanielGarneau]

I have to say I've encountered numerous forums that I've really struggled to register with and it's an alarmingly high number. Just some of the problems I've encountered:

• Forums that have registration turned off, but not by design (In one case I recently came across, turned off for over three years ).
• Multiple captcha attempts that I can't get past.

View attachment 49684

• Not knowing the capital city of Columbia is 'Bogotá' rather than 'bogata' or that two plus two equals 'four' and not '4', a problem I've encountered so many times.
• Block puzzles asking me to spot signs, cars, shop fronts and all manner of ambiguous items.

View attachment 49685

• And then there's that confirmation email that may come sometime between now and never and probably delivered to your spam folder when it arrives.

In my opinion there are two sides to this debate

Thank you zappaDPJ, and Tracy Perry, and everyone who are taking part in this thread!

I'd like to share some of my thoughts about what has been said so far in this thread in light of my experience.

Those of us who have been involved with the IT world have become accustomed to its ways, and we understand many of the unwritten rules and of the implicit meaning linked to the context of a field within a form, its shape, its sequence, etc.. Things have become so obvious to us that we don't realize all of the things we had to learn over the course of years before we could become convinced that all is well and easy-enough for most. The above quote provides a good set of examples.

Some of these issues we, as forum owners, have control over, some we don't. In the case of my own forum, I chose a captcha display that avoided any potential confusion, even if it was not deemed the most standard one nor the safest one.

Other issues, we can't control (unless we know of a workaround) because they are part of how the software we are using operates. As far as I am concerned, the forms displayed by the PhpBB software when a user wants to join the forum initially is too confusing for persons with low previous exposure to IT systems, of which forum software are heirs: too many instructions and fields appear on the same page, some of which do not have to be filled if others are.

Now it has been said in this thread that if people can't register without help, they can't use the forum functions without help either. That point is certainly a valid one. For example, with the standard PhpBB as I have it set up, the tool designed to create a link will be hard to understand for that sort of person. It is the forum owner's job to decide if he wants to deactivate such a function or make it more user-friendly through a mod (or extension), or move-on to a different forum software.

These problems are clearly related!

 

[LeadCrow]

I agree with the above. The basic signup and login processes hardly changed since the vb2 era, and even as new ones emerged like oAuth, their adoption took forever even in the most popular scripts and you had to depend on addons to bypass those limitations.

As certain services like Whatsapp demonstrate, on mobile to make signup and login even more seamless: using a phone number to validate an account, then complete your profile anytime later. Consider that many people dont use email at all even if they have one, others dont have Facebook/Google accounts, but phone numbers are now nearly universal.

It would be a mistake to underestimate how streamlining signup could help websites take advantage better of periods of virality. And it's not about people being stupid or failing to click Next.
Holders of normal or social accounts can disappear after a while, and ignore board emails and newsletters. With phone numbers, you could still reach them, assuming its important, not invasive and they havent changed their account's verified phone number since.