[cheesegrits]

I have a site with a similar requirement to spoonfeed the users. One thing I found that helped slightly was to put a "Forgot your password?" link on the navbar if they aren't logged in. As the only place that link shows usually is in the error message if you get your password wrong, and the kind of user we are talking about doesn't typically read past the first three words of any given error message before giving up, this helped a little bit.

But I've also found that pandering too much to their willful ignorance and/or laziness is a losing proposition. So I still enforce unique emails and account verification, so they can't just create another account.

-- hugh