Web International Awards

28

MAR 2009 2

Have a blog? Let people comment!

user registration off screenshot

I ended up on Reichel Graphic Design's blog after following an article on Steven Snell's DesignM.ag. I read scanned through the above mentioned post, and after that I wanted to post a comment.

Bummer. I was asked to login in order to post my comment. I clicked the login link, hoping that I will be able to register on that page too. That was not the case. So I pursued to my goal. The site is powered by Wordpress, so I knew how to end up on the new user registration page. New bummer: "User registration is currently not allowed".

Let your users comment!

My question is: if you do not allow comments, if you do no allow registration on your site, why would you allow users to go to a login page, or for that matter, see the link to the login page? Thank God the site didn't provide a comment form that will ask me to login in order to post my comment. I could have written a huge comment, then realize I had just wasted my time for nothing.

This is something that you must not do to your users! Not now, not ever. I hope you enjoyed this article. Let me know what you think about it in the comments. If you liked this one, you can stay updated to upcoming articles via the rss feed.

Published on Saturday, March 28th, 2009 at 6:00 pm in usability.

About Bogdan Pop

Bogdan Pop is a young Romanian entrepreneur who runs WebRaptor. He is a web developer with awesome design skills, who enjoys writing about everyday's work and usability. He relaxes by taking photos every once in a while and by mixing french electronic music. Connect with him via Twitter.
 
  1. Gary Reichel says: March 28th, 2009 at 6:32 pm

    I used to allow comments, but recently I was attacked by hackers. So I locked down the site and have not gotten around to allow any comments. I’m sorry you wasted your time, this week I will change some settings so this will not be a problem.

  2. admin says: March 29th, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Hey Reichel,

    Sorry to hear you were attacked by hackers. I didn’t waste my time. Not at all. It would have been that case if the site would have allowed me to input my data, comment etc into a form, and only then to tell me that I cannot post comments.

    You could however, enable user registration, only approve manually user registration, and allow only registered users to post.

    That would be a fairly good trick about tackling hackers. That and keeping backups.





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