hehe... send me an email and i can answer questions otherwise i might miss them

first thing: it is not forced sign up at all. I would definitely not do this? why, well if you get people coming from say http://www.google.com in the middle of a thread they will almost certainly not sign up to read one thread, why loose them.

However my audience to my root domain is normally quality links. They are people given the domain name and told to go there knowing what they will get, it is also where my paid adveritising goes.

I still don't force them to sign up if you click on any of the button images you go to the forum.

What did i do? it is just a piece of the registration form put somewhere else, that is it with a few small additions.

you can see an alternative at http://www.talkstargate.com, http://www.talkfarscape.com etc. I changed the registration program to add some stats so i know where people came from, ie which URL sent registeres (if you put your mouse over the stargate pic on http://www.ascifi.com you will see an id number in the url) this is the logging working.

But in essence it is just part of the registration page with lots of hidden values.