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For a project I'm working on right now our team decided to simply eschew user accounts even though it's a site that is built around user generated content and c

For a project I'm working on right now our team decided to simply eschew user accounts even though it's a site that is built around user generated content and comments. Everything is done by entering your email address (which the site doesn't surface) and then clicking a confirm link we send via email. So far,our testers love it. It seems to have gotten them quickly past the user dread. It also means your first participation in our site can happen by submitting one form and confirming one email. That's somewhere between two and five steps shorter than had we required account setup. While it adds an extra step to subsequent interaction, email confirmation, we feel like it's a good trade off for them. After all, going through a password reset when you come back to the site is an easy way to lose people. And for us, it eliminated a lot of development headaches. When a user first participates in the site we assign them a randomly generated username. And they can change it to whatever they like ... They just fill put the change my username form and confirm by email. Obviously, if we wanted to save credit card info or something like that we might need to modify this approach for PCI compliance, but I believe a fundamentally similar workflow could be employed even then.

tokenizerrr 12y ago
I'm not sure I understand, you're saying that you are sending an email for every login? It surprises me that your testers seem to love that, it seems very obnoxious to me. I also don't quite understand: > After all, going through a password reset when you come back to the site is an easy way to lose people Most password reset forms I've seen just ask the user for their email, send them a link and ask them for a new password. This is nearly the same flow as your regular login flow, if I understand correctly?
- tracker1 12y ago
  I'm guessing there is a long (week or two) session cookie that they only need to re-confirm their email after a few weeks of not being on the site... maybe as a secondary token/cookie to re-entering their email, if it matches the second token, they're in... It'd be similar to 2fa, but without the first factor (a password).... I work on a similar site, where each real interaction is a financial transaction... since there's no real need to login after that transaction, there's no password, they're buying a product, and that is delivered via email... no need for the hassle of creating an account to login with... an account is made with a random password under the covers, but it's never really needed.
Sir_Substance 12y ago
You're my hero, never stop being amazing!

tokenizerrr 12y ago

I'm not sure I understand, you're saying that you are sending an email for every login? It surprises me that your testers seem to love that, it seems very obnoxious to me. I also don't quite understand: > After all, going through a password reset when you come back to the site is an easy way to lose people Most password reset forms I've seen just ask the user for their email, send them a link and ask them for a new password. This is nearly the same flow as your regular login flow, if I understand correctly?

tracker1 12y ago
I'm guessing there is a long (week or two) session cookie that they only need to re-confirm their email after a few weeks of not being on the site... maybe as a secondary token/cookie to re-entering their email, if it matches the second token, they're in... It'd be similar to 2fa, but without the first factor (a password).... I work on a similar site, where each real interaction is a financial transaction... since there's no real need to login after that transaction, there's no password, they're buying a product, and that is delivered via email... no need for the hassle of creating an account to login with... an account is made with a random password under the covers, but it's never really needed.

Sir_Substance 12y ago

You're my hero, never stop being amazing!