As we all know, it's quite helpful when a member places his location (at least country) in his/her user profile.

Lomag, is there a way to force (or at least suggest) that information to be entered during registration? If it can't be forced or required, is there a way to automatically generate a PM from the admin to welcome them and suggest they fill it out??

Maybe a more elegant solution that I haven't mentioned??

 

I think it's a good idea, but aren't we scaring ppl away then?

 

It can be forced but like Iceman said, we dont want to scare people away with too many requirements to register.

 

Can the suggestion method be used then? In other words, don't make it required but somehow get a message to the new registrant that it would be helpful, etc. Again, country is really all that is needed.

At the very least, it should be a sticky in the FAQ forum...

 

The PM would be nice, it could even welcome you to the forum... But we take care on that anyways and will even tell the new member to please put the destination in his profile... But if the PM can be done, I think it would be nice...

 

I guess the reason I suggested this in the first place is to help you guys from always having to tell people to add the location to the profile, etc.

Many times someone registers and asks a question. It then takes three or four more posts to verify his location before anyone can actually help the guy. The board is growing pretty quickly and is not likely to slow down any time soon. Iceman, you deserve a vacation from constantly having to explain the same thing over and over again, don't you think?

 

You mean another Hawaii vacation?
As I said, Rudy. I like the idea with the PM, and even the idea of making it mandatory... BUT, I don't want to scare anybody away!
The most ppl probably don't know about the big differences in country spec's and that's why they don't put te location in. As soon as we tell them they do it... But making it mandatory would probably scare ppl away, because they think we want to know their exact location, including the city and don't realize that it is for the country spec's of the car...

 

As I said, I don't care if location stays optional for the purposes of registering, I just think there should be some mention or instruction as to why opting to include the (otherwise optional) information is a good idea. I was wondering if that message could be included somewhere on the registration forms or, if not, on some automatically generated PM that is delivered upon registration.

I don't want to discourage anyone from registering either so if the consensus is to not force the issue, fine. I still think we should be doing something more automatic than just waiting for one of our "regulars" to ask the newbie to do it. If it can't be done automatically, then we can always resort to "Plan B" which is to keep doing what we've been doing. As I mentioned before, at the very least, it should be a FAQ sticky...

 

 

Rudy,

It looks like you've found another short fall of the board software. It's not possible to place the location field or any of those fields in the "My Controls" section on the registration screen. I contacted the IPB folks and they said perhaps they'll add that functionality in the future.