Ask HN: Best sign-up process without relying on third parties?

7 points·oxplot··5 comments

What's the best sign up process that doesn't rely on sites such as facebook, twitter and the big G?

The simplest and least headache inducing that I know of is to ask user their email and a password and let them in but hold back some features until the user has responded to the confirmation email (like how twitter does it).

Any other ideas?

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What are you using the confirmed email for? Do you need the user's email for a core function of the site? Or is it an antispam tool?

Look at Hacker News. Its signup process is dead simple - you enter a username and password, and you're automatically logged in. I'd hazard a guess that doing that is the simplest process possible, but there is a tradeoff - it's impossible to recover your password if you forget it. It all depends on what is required for your site to function, so I don't think there is a simple solution to your question.

I need the email for sending notifications mostly.

Then ask it when the user does something notification-inducing. If he doesn't want notifications, he can choose not to give it.

You could use this service, instead of sending an actual mail, which introduces another step for the user: http://verify-email.org/

It only verifies whether the email is a valid one. It doesn't verify if the person actually owns the email.

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