Free the message board

[G-money]

Perhaps removing the Login/Password requirements will create more reply's and grow the conversations as they once were on the old page......

I enjoyed the banter and now it's gone.

[tfat]

I'm with G. Except the banter. I hate banter. Bring on the banter.

[Eric Z]

Even with a registration requirement to post spammer bots were hitting this board within hours of it being installed. That is why I added the challenge question to the registration that only is easily answered by a boater but not a robot. On the old board there was also a requirement to fill in the answer to a question each time you posted.

The days of being able to post without registering are long over for everywhere on the internet.
The only alternative that I can think of to registration would be a difficult captcha. Those are very aggravating for the user and I don't think would achieve an easier to use experience. One reason for the big change in the board style was so that it could automatically change to a mobile friendly layout when viewed on a mobile device. Having to do a captcha on mobile every time would really kill banter for sure.


I am open to ideas. Any big changes are going to require someone who knows their way around .php and phpBB to volunteer their time and expertise.

[G-money]

There have been many times I would have posted only to be turned away because either I couldn't log in or the login was invalid. I made many attempts using different emails before I could even login as G-money. All the previous attempts showed me that the acct creation was successful but the username and password wouldn't work when it came time to login.

Perhaps it's just me - I did like the old board where all you had to do was answer the question each time and you didn't have to register.

[Eric Z]

One advantage of registration is that once you are logged in you can have the browser save your password to auto populate indefinitely on that device as well as any other devices that you are logged into with Google Chrome or Firefox Sync (or the TapaTalk app which saves your log-ins for multiple message boards)

If anyone else is having trouble logging in: do a password reset to a lower security mobile friendly password temporarily and then sort it out from there. Hit the link below if that describes you.
ucp.php?mode=sendpassword

Not directed at G-money specifically, but anyone out there: The database is small enough that if people make alt accounts it won't really bloat things up, but for the sake of keeping things simple and being able to manually cull bot created users try to avoid making alt accounts unless you really need one.

semi related - If someone wants to stay completely anonymous that will ALWAYS be an option here. If folks want to add enough info or a nickname that you mom or someone who knows you would recognize you I think that would be beneficial for encouraging discussions.

[LadyLuckIsNotaDude]

Come now people, why all the.... angst?