Greeting page for restricted site

[chariotdriver]

I'm not even sure what to call it, but I have a site that is restricted in the sense that you cannot just get into it without first registering and myself viewing your registration and then allowing you in the site.
The problem I'm having is that those that may be allowed in do not know what the site is about.
The only thing that I can think to do is to create a initial site/template to explain some of the features that we have , what we discuss etc to get them interested enough to want to go through the regsitration process.
Is there anything out there at this point for those of us that have this issue?
Thanks,
Phil