As someone who is fairly active in forums, particularly of the tech support variety I’d recommend putting a join or subscribe button on your forum page… The only way I found to join was by trying to post a new thread it then gave me the option to login or create new. Also it sent me all over and then said “you are now logged in” then I have to try and find the forums again as it sent me off somewhere else… when I did get back to the forum I was trying to post in it once again asked for me to login… rather confusing particulary for a newb… I can see people getting frustrated and giving up. I thought the idea is to encourage people to want to use linux…
Hi shard92 – looks interesting – I can’t remember the join-up routine, so long ago, but I’d be interested to hear from others how they went. I’ve also put a link in the moderator lounge in case they don’t notice.
On 10/26/2008 shard92 wrote:
> As someone who is fairly active in forums, particularly of the tech
> support variety I’d recommend putting a join or subscribe button on
> your forum page…
There’s a “Register/Login” link in the upper right corner. Is that what you are looking for?
Uwe
No there is a login, it doesn’t say anything about register… just a thought for newbies trying to figure out how to get access… just from personal experience unless it’s easy people will get confused… if it is a long “read this” to figure out how to do it people won’t unless forced to and even then then may not…( how many people have actually read the MS software agreement when they install that other os? )
It’s one of those K.I.S.S. moments… like when you log into amazon… they don’t have a logout either just a “this is not me” link that logs you out… can be confusing…
thanks for listening…
I’d agree. Ideally for the forum it would be good if underneath the “openSUSE Forums” there was a login box and a link to register. Up the top of the page, shoved in green background is not easy to see for those of us whose eyes aren’t that great.
shard92 wrote:
> No there is a login, it doesn’t say anything about register…
When I go to http://forums.opensuse.org/ I see in the upper right hand corner:
| Today’s Posts | Search Register | Login
Maybe some of the ‘skins’ drop the Register. If so, then that should be corrected.
But, if it is visible on all but shard92’s then maybe he has a unique
brower/video card problem.
And, it wouldn’t hurt if another vertical spacer were placed between “Search”
and “Register”, and a larger, bolder font (more contrast) could be useful to
address AlienHealer’s weak eyed concerns.
AlienHealer,
> Ideally for the forum it would be good if underneath the
> “openSUSE Forums” there was a login box and a link to register.
I put the login link in the welcome message for new users.
but ideally you should be able to log in from the main page without having to click on a link.
Have a look at the ubuntu forum, that would be ideal here. login box on the main page. The only time I login is when I want to post, I simply click to reply to a topic and login then, because I can’t be bothered coming to the forum, then going to another link to login then start reading.
To me, this forum needs to attract a lot of new users, and one of the things is to make the forum easier to use. A new member has posted they couldn’t see a register or login thing, instead of pointing out it is at the top, staff should be wondering how many other people miss it, and how to attract people to it. If one person has missed it, then lots more would of too.
Actually it can’t be a unique thing as 1) I’vd logged in from two different computers… One being opensuse 11.0 with what ever firefox comes bundled with a Matrox g400 32mb video card and the other a win98se with an ATI expert 16mb card. Today the register shows but it did not before…
I agree that maybe there should be a spot right on the forum home page to just type in your login without actually trying to find the login button… other sites I belong to do that but hey just a preference as my eyes also don’t see as well as they use to and the green makes it a bit difficult…
AlienHealer,
> but ideally you should be able to log in from the main page without
> having to click on a link.
There has to be compromise between ideal for one situation and ideal for
another. We’re integrated with the openSUSE login which doesn’t currently
work with a login from the main page. Life is full of trade offs. Thanks
for the input.