3 Reasons Not To Password Your Community

Make your community open to everyone. Don't force us to register to read your blogs and forums. There are 3 reasons for this.

1. It's harder to find your community. Once you password or block content, it can't be used to attract members. It wont show up in search results. It wont be linked to by bloggers/websites. It wont be discussed outside of the community. You make it less likely existing members will pass it on to friends. These are big problems.

2. You're more likely to repel potential members. Registration is a time and information risk. You risk your time and your personal information in exchange for participating. If you can't show members what they're going to experience, why should they join.

3. Registration means nothing without participation. A member that registers just to read the content is as valuable (or as worthless) as the anonymous ip address who reads the discussions. 

It's participation that matters. If you keep your content visible to all, members will only join when they want to participate. No sooner, no later. This is a good thing.

Comments

[Martin Reed]

I am a huge proponent of keeping communities as open as possible.

When you first launched Commania though, it was as a closed community. Now the content is accessible to all.

Was this a case of different goals/objectives, so a different approach?

- Martin

[Matt Rhodes]

I'm also a big fan of open communities. But only when there isn't a very good reason for it being closed. And in some cases I think there is.

Maybe you want to ask your community about things that are still secret, or maybe you need a place where people are comfortable having quite personal discussions.

At FreshNetworks we run many communities that are open, and in fact I've spent much of this week with a new client where we're opening up their existing, closed community. But we also work with some client where a close community makes most sense for them and for the people in the community.

So my option would always be that open should be the default. But sometimes there are good reasons for your community to be closed.

Matt

[Nate]

I've been waiting for this topic to come up here. I like communities where both are available. I can browse through and participate without registering, but I have the option of creating a profile. I find these sites always have some good regular participants. It's the best of both worlds!