FORCED SIGNUP

Look at http://www.ascifi.com ; The site has a forced signup form at the main page. This would be realy useful for me at the startup of my forum. How did he/she do that?

I also have a forced signup for my boards. Go into user-permissions and change the unregistered group to not be able to view the board. I've also changed my users awaiting confirmation to not be able to view the board.

Then change your errornopermission template to be a little more obvious that they need to register in order to join the forums (nicely of course)

That`s a good idea, but I don`t want them to see my board with 0 posts and 1 member and when they would like to write something the membership form pops up. I want the gateway without the forum being displayed at all, so I`m going to contact the admin on that page. Or have I missunderstood how it will look (I`m not sure, I can`t realy test it because of the cookies)?

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.

Haakon it does however sound like you want to do what me2be does, you can simply require that for anyone to view the board they need to register. Personally i don't like this as explained, some people would not visit and i now have enough posts in my board not to worry about it being to small, it really depends on your genre as well.

check me2be suggestion in the control panel, it may be all you want/need

Thanks for replying Chrispadfield!
From your explenation of your signup concept: that is what I want! I don`t want a restricted forum, I just want a doorway to trick people to sign up until some of them are running some conversations (maybe flaming me for tricking them in), and then opening up to all.
So you`re saying that I can just copy and paste the signup script from vbulletion onto another page? (I`m not any good at scripting, but I think I can do that, if it`s the case)

I`m not sure about Me2Be`s method since I haven`t seen a forum like that yet, and I know Me2Be is running this top secret chick forum that she won`t show anyone else, so I need to look at someone else`s.......anyone?

me2be just stops anyone accessing the forum unless registered (in control pane)

my trick is what you want then, just copy and paste the signup form, check the action url is correct and if you don't want to use all the fields (like i don't) you probably have to use some hidden variables. You could always just copy my form and use that but there is a hidden variable or two in their that you would not want as it is part of my tracking script.

Originally posted by Haakon
I`m not sure about Me2Be`s method since I haven`t seen a forum like that yet, and I know Me2Be is running this top secret chick forum that she won`t show anyone else, so I need to look at someone else`s.......anyone?

It isn't top-secret, she would rather promote her forums in ways other than here. Don't take offense at it though.

Thank you very much for that Chrispadfield!