Why are accounts required? It seems reasonable to let people browse the site without signing up for an account or even logging in.
I think that more people would become litestep users if the community was more open. There is no way for a new visitor to tell how great this site is by visiting the front page. They get a very short blurb about litestep, but they can't see that there is an active community here or the depth of the available resources.
If bandwidth is the reason then disable anonymous downloads.
It is required by our host.
Does your host sell our email's to spammers?
no...they dont have access to our db.
Oh,
I've probably heard this before, but I have a short memory:
Why is it a requirement?
Build a bridge out of him!
is he made of wood?
They are required so that we can control our own unruley users without needing them.
*creak*
Oh I see... well that makes sense :)
*splinter*
It's kind of pathetic whatever your excuse is.
Yes, I only registered to tell you this.
Hahaha...
Instead of saying how "pathetic" it is, why don't you cough up some funds for a proper host...
It does suck that it needs registration, and this does hurt the community (a bit). But for everything there is a reason.
Accounts keep people away...they can't see what they are missing.
I seem to remember DeV mentioning that ls.net had... was it 100,000 new registrations last year? That hardly sounds like it keeps people away. On the contrary, it might add a certain mystique... people will register just to know what the hell it's all about.
I'm all for compulsory registration actually. Considering how many complete idiots that worm their way in here, I shudder to think what it would be like if there was free access, anonymous posting and so on.
A free, anonymous and active community? *shudder*
What is the main goal of litestep.net? To nurture and support a creative community? Is it going about achieving its goals the best possible way?
Lets hypothetically imagine, say, sourceforge needing a login to even view any content.
Would that make it a very good resource?
There are parallels between Sourceforge and ls.net.
People should be able to view without logging in. Registration required for posting would not affect the atmosphere.
I'm not trying to be a pain, I just want the LS community to grow. And registration to even peek in the window does not help growth. It is elitest and rude.
If you can give us a free host that allows over two million hits a month and 30GB of data I will be happy to move the site. Oh yea...we also need root access on the server so we can configure everything that we need for the domain.
free? neat, i pay 8€ for that
First of all, sorry for the Wall'o'text.
Secondly, try to read it, I meant every bit of it.
I am astounded. The only reason I registered was just to see what litestep even is... and after registering, I have come to the conclusion that *you* don't even know. The only mention of litestep I have ever heard of was due to my leanings towards linux, and while (from what I can piece together) litestep looks like it might have been a cool thing, once upon a time, there's NO INFO AVAILABLE ON IT. Requiring users to register before they even know what they're looking at is stupid. How many thousands of potentially useful users have you turned away because they don't want to give away their email address to some unknown entity? You need more info on the front page, you need to give people an idea of what you have, you need to generate INTEREST. If your product is locked up in this little box, no one will see it. It's no wonder the first entry I saw on the forums linked to on your news page was "Why is litestep DYING?!?" I have an answer for you... NO ONE KNOWS WHAT IT IS. Even the wiki is stupendously uninformative. The text under "What is litestep?" doesn't tell me what it is. What the heck is AfterSTEP? What does litestep DO? All I got from the wiki was a vague idea that it might be something to do with a desktop enhancement... and that it's some sort of big, ponderous coding project.
This was meant as a constructive criticism.
I am not arguing against registration, but you need more info on your front door, or no one will knock.
The reason there are so many registrations is because the you, the administrators, force them to. How many of those are repeat visitors? And do you troll bugmenot for accounts to kill? If so, why?
Most of this site could be done with fewer images, less markup, and less dynamic code, which would lead to significantly less bandwidth and server processor usage. I find it hard to believe that server costs, which should be ridiculously low, have anything to do with registration policy.
Assuming the site were trimmed to be lean, which it's not, then you could restrict images to registered users -- the code, discussion, and module info is what most people care about. You'd end up ahead.
Not to mention that a lot of this could off-loaded to other sites for free (wikis for infrequently-changed information like wikia, jotspot; shell-tweak related files at an on-topic file host like tucows; themes at a site like customize.org or dA, which both have LS categories already).