Below is the message my new sign up test user saw when attempting to join my site:
(start of quote) "Invalid Activation Key!
Make sure you are entering the full URL from the activation email - some email clients will cut the URL off." (end of quote)
In fact there was no problem with the URL. The testuser merely got distracted or discouraged during the sign up process, and let the browser close without completing the actions required to complete registration and fully activate the account.
When the test user went back to the validation email message, and clicked the activation link, this error message appeared as a red-highlighted banner at the URL
Yoursite/user/activate/f8d27146144dd996d4c8b68dc37f1af2
So what are new potential members to do? Many may simply give up. At this stage, a user account will appear as "Pending" in the Admin user accounts dashboard, but will have incomplete details, making approval difficult.
I need to change the language somewhere so that the error message is something like this:
(new error message) "Invalid Activation Key!
If this is your first attempt to activate your account, make sure you are entering the full URL from the activation email - some email clients will cut the URL off.
If the URL is not being cut off, please login to complete your account details.
Go to to the site login page here, with your username (or email address), and your password: Yoursite/login URL" (end of new error message)
To be double safe (i.e. in order to make it as easy as possible for new members to join) we should probably provide a little extra information in the validation email itself: The current text begins:
(start of quote) Thank you for signing up for a YOUR SITE account!
You are one step away from joining our community - simply click
on the following link to activate your account...(end of quote)
To which I would like to add (if my understanding is correct):
(new message to add to validation email) "Please note: this link can only be used once. If the process is interrupted for any reason, and fails, then to complete the registration process you will need to:
(i) go to the site login page (link here),
(ii) login with your username (or email) and password, then
(iii) answer two profile questions for which answers are required"
(end of new message for validation email)
Other sites will not have the same requirements at step (iii), but a similar instruction might help in the validation email, so the new user can know what is happening and what needs to be done after log in, if anything.
I think I can sort this out using the language strings, but any comments or advice on the matter would be welcome.
Have other site owners had similar issues that may confound new users when signing up?
--
PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 05/27/18 05:13:14AM
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