Simon Willison’s Weblog

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5 items tagged “registration”

2010

Instapaper requiring email and passwords for new accounts. Instapaper are changing from their novel “enter a username or email address, only enter a password if you really want one” registration scheme to a more traditional email and password required model. Messing with registration forms is a risky business—in this case, the non-obvious support issues that resulted were a net negative.

# 15th December 2010, 8:35 pm / forms, instapaper, registration, usability, recovered

Stack Overflow Blog: OpenID, One Year Later. Google’s support is a huge deal—61% of Stack Overflow accounts use Google. Google’s implementation of directed identity has caused problems though, since Google provide a different OpenID for each domain making it hard for Stack Overflow, Server Fault and Super User to correlate accounts. Their solution is to require a (verified) e-mail address from Google OpenID users using sreg and use that as a key for the accounts.

# 14th April 2010, 8:46 pm / directedidentity, email, google, login, openid, registration, sreg, stackoverflow

2009

If you are demanding registration before checkout, you need to cease this practice immediately. It is costing you a fortune.

Bruce Tognazzini

# 5th November 2009, 7:22 pm / brucetognazzini, ia, login, registration, signup

Want Proof OpenID Can Succeed? Just Scroll Down. “It’s easier for blogs, which don’t need a lot of demographic information about a user, to let people jump in and start participating socially without filling out a registration form.” Aargh. Repeat after me: supporting OpenID does not mean you can’t require additional registration details through a signup form.

# 16th January 2009, 12:16 pm / openid, registration, wired

2008

8 More Design Mistakes with Account Sign-in (via) Second of a two part series by Jared Spool. I agree with all of them with the possible exception of #15 which advocates providing a non-email password recovery solution. Security “questions” are usually dreadfully insecure, and introduce the need to lock users out of their accounts after just a few tries.

# 17th January 2008, 4:35 pm / jared-spool, registration, security, signin, usability