Registration Process ideas

* The Join (Register) page let me create a new account while I'm still logged into the existing one. This just isn't right. Shouldn't it display a "you already have an account, click here to modify your profile" message instead? How about at least warning a person before s\he signs up that her IP previously logged in as other users?

* It seems that you can create user names like "___0___". This isn't a problem really, just noting.

* I didn't notice any password length or complexity restrictions, but I didn't want to create too many dummy accounts to check. As a matter a fact, on my dummy account I was able to make the password same as the username. This is bad. Since we go to great length to keep our online community secure, perhaps we should require that passwords contain at least one of each: lowercase letter, uppercase letter, and a number. Length range of 12-24 sounds reasonable. (Most people paste them in from a passwords.txt anyway. I guess the security of that data source is their responsibility.)

* How about making a user check off YES to several "I agree" fields before signing up. This includes agreeing to abide by the rules (BTW, I think we need a rules page), understanding the charter, terms of service, copyright issues, etc.

* It is a good idea to add as much "help text" to the second form as possible, but that makes the form bulkier visually, thus making it look more complicated. You know how I love moving some text to an (I) info icon. Clicking that icon or holding the mouse over it would display the extra instructions. Want me to design a proposed interface for both the first and the second sign-up form?

* "Other identities" field would be very helpful. Some people used different handles between the old Snitz forum, the older FF9HQ forum, and the new v4PM. And also people may know each-other on other sites, from NeoMidgar.com to ffOnline. Once the profiles are text-searchable (much later), they will be the ultimate resource for understanding who is who, which would otherwise get very confusing.

* "How did you find out about the project?" field.

* A "Skills" field, so we can quickly identify who does what. We'd provide examples like "Drawing, Digital Graphics Editing, PhotoShop 7, Flash, Vector Graphics, Pixel Icon Editing" or "C#, HTML, VBScript, MS SourceSafe, MS Project, Systems Analyst 2002". We don't exactly NEED this information for "managing our human resources", but it's one of the first thing you'd want to know about a member when looking up his/her profile.

(Most people won't bother putting all that info in their Bio, and besides, having separate optional fields like that would encourage people to tell us more about themselves. People don't have to fill all of them in right away, they can do that later. And the profile view can skip all the blank fields, so space isn't wasted. IMHO, we should have as many of those optional fields as we can reasonably think of.)

And I just want to say that the "Contact Options" check boxes are brilliant. ZBOPM (Zero-Budget Online Project Management) "way-cool idea" award goes to whoever thought of them.

I hope other people will post other ideas related to the New User Registration process in reply to this topic.

I really like the "Skills" field idea. Great to know who newbies are and what they do without hunting them for info.