By alvaroortiz on

I'm customizing a Drupal installation to use it as an ecommerce site. We have to make as easy as possible the buying process: imagine a person who arrives to the site, browse through the available products and decides to buy something. After he clicks "add to cart" adn then "checkout", he must register himself in the system, but this is a task which interferes seriously with the chekout process, as he has to change application in order to get the password to be able to login and then continue with the checkout. Also the system election of the password is a drawback in user terms, as he is faced with an additional task (change password) which he might forget to do.

I'm sure this must have been disussed here previously, but my question is if it wouldn't be useful to provide a configuration option for the user module in which you let decide the site admin about:

- letting users chosing his own passwords
- automatic login after registration

These two things would be one only option, as you are not going to do an automatic login if the user hasn't chosen his own password.

Our opinion is to face problems when they appear, but not make difficult the user experience when it can be easier. The advantage of forcing the users to check their emails in order to get their password is to check that they are who they say they are, but this is not needed in most registrations. At least, let the admin decide when to do that check.

We are going to code this configuration option, but first we wanted to check your opinions, and see if this would be fine as a patch or would not be wanted at all.

Comments

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

killes@www.drop.org commented

I have wanted the registration process to be more modular for a while now.However, I don't think a bunch of config options is going to cut it. Maybe we should offer a hook where registration modules coul dhook themselves in and provide the neccessary services.

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matthew’s picture

matthew commented

I'm also afraid that users will loose interest when trying to register.

Also, the email by default says that they can log in and change their password. It does not say to click on the "Edit" tab to do so. This should be changed I think...

I'd like to see the option of 'trusting users' to be able to log in right away. And to pick their own password from the start.

Even if they can't log in till they get the email, they should be able to choose their password from the get-go.

Best,

Matthew
Have a great day™

mork’s picture

mork commented

Also the system election of the password is a drawback in user terms, as he is faced with an additional task (change password) which he might forget to do.

I couldn't agree more. This is one of those small useability issues that is easily overlooked by developers/designers but has a big impact on the user experience.

On a related note, I have an additional rant :) Why does every site ask me for an email address? most even promise to never email me anything - so why ask? We're kidding ourselves if we think it ensures someone is unique.. I would like my drupal site to have a registration process which is like 3 fields.. username, password, and password confirmation (with optional fields in their profile, such as email address).

yea, yea, what about contacting them? who cares. I've been a member of drupal.org for almost 2 years now and not a single email (that I'm aware of) has been sent by them... so why was it a requirement of registration? I understand that to some sites, it is critical, but they are few and far between.

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

E-mail addresses might not be unique, but it provides a barrier for bots. Most free-mail providers have captchas so even if you have an unlimited supply of working email addresses, you'll need to create them manually to use them.

Don't underestimate the damage a bot (or a group of bots) can do to a site.

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ultraBoy’s picture

ultraBoy commented

Everything said above. This is a really must-do! Pleeeease! :)

bsaxon’s picture

bsaxon commented

Like others here, I would like to see this feature.

Almost every user that has signed up on my site fails to login the first time. This usually followed with multiple failed logon attempts. For users who do get in, the next day or so when they try to login again, it is usually coupled with more failed login attempts and a password recovery request. Even as this point, I still don't think users are changing their passwords.

For most advanced users, the process is familiar, and they have no problems. Although, I think most people aren't used to this type registration process at all. It is more common for a user to specify a password during signup and then confirm the account by clicking a URL in an email.

A solution that would act as a compromise would a signup process that works like current Drupal user registration, where they are mailed a password, BUT upon first signing practically FORCE (or at least insist) the user to change their password. Basically, make it the first thing they see.

Note: this is discussed in varying degrees in other discussions on this site -- http://drupal.org/node/22876 and http://drupal.org/node/2158 and http://drupal.org/node/1959

There is a hack presented here -- http://drupal.org/node/2158 -- but I'm not sure if it works with latest stable version of drupal (currently 4.6.5) or with civicspace. I'm going to try to do something like this, and use this hack it as a guide. I'll post my results and observations when I'm done, which should be soon.

blakehall’s picture

blakehall commented

While I agree it would be nice to see this as a default behavior, you can install the LoginToboggan module that will accomplish the same thing:

http://drupal.org/project/logintoboggan