- Joined
- May 25, 2013
- Messages
- 5,010
Yeah, I've never understood the "difficulty" in a registration process... but I also have a wife that is, by her own admission, computer illiterate and she "tests" the logins for me on any site I set up. 
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:
View attachment 49684
- 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 49685
- 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.
In my opinion there are two sides to this debate
- 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.
![]()
Just tried out a register page of a phpBB forum, there are 4 fields to fill out.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.
This doesnt take into consideration people first introduced to personal internet access, like teens. Should they create an (email) account so they can create another account on 1 site?99% of the population should have an email address too.
It's maybe just my opinion but I think we've lost them long time ago...., changing to phone verification won't get them back.This doesnt take into consideration people first introduced to personal internet access, like teens. Should they create an (email) account so they can create another account on 1 site?
Forums should do better to win them before losing them permanently to social networks.
Just tried out a register page of a phpBB forum, there are 4 fields to fill out.
1 - Username
2 - Email
3 - Password
4 - Password Confirmation
5 - Captcha
Even if you haven't studied rocket science, people nowadays in the year of 2017 should be able to do this. And 99% of the population should have an email address too.
You only need to set that account once, and tech-challenged people can get help to signup.Meanwhile to sign up on Facebook has the following fields:
1. First name
2. Surname
3. Email or phone number
4. Password
5. Date of birth
6. Gender
Think the process isn't quite as simple as people make it out to be...