Validation and customer access...

[artsygal]

After surfing a little I've come across a few posts from moderators who explain that an account needs to be validated before a new member has access to the rest of the 'hidden' forums here. I'd like to propose a slight change to that. I completly understand the reasoning of wanting to validate a member before allowing them to post - I run a forum myself and am aware of the issues. However, I feel that a registered member should atleast be able to READ the forums and search them.

I logged onto here because I'm having a problem with my email, and calling Hostgator and speaking to someone there didn't get me a satisfactory answer. Rather than waiting till tomorrow to try to get a different person on the phone who would be more willing to work with me on my problem, I turned to the forums to see if there was anyone else who's had the same problem - perhaps I could use that information to fix my problem myself. I have a suspicion that my problem is quite common and I'm sure someone else has run into it before me.

Imagine my suprise when after registering and responding to the email I STILL can't even as much as view the rest of the forums. I know that this capability is possible with vBulletin, as it is with phpBB..

Adminsitrators of this board, please take my suggestion into consideration. I feel that it will defiantely benifit you to let members read what is there even before you manually validate their accounts and let them start to post. It will cut down the frustration level your customers drastically. I know in my case i had planned on spending the next several hours working on my site, and instead here I am at a standstill until I get my problems solved - which most likely won't be until tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile.. someone.. please validate me!!

JC

[quietFinn]

I had the same problem, and it took a while before I understood that I have to validate myself, i.e. that the registration was not enough.

I wonder if it'd be possible that every HG's customer gets automatically an already validated username/password for the forum?

Registration and Validation is a one time thing, you can still view some of the forums and even post in them before you are validated. It is possible we will intergrate VBulletin into our systems in the future to do it automatically, but not at this time. Accounts are validated within 24 hours. Unfortunately with the size and rapid growth of HostGator we need to do this to keep everything managed and clean. It also reduces spam and keeps the quality of the posts high. If you ever think you are not or have not been registered after the 24 to 48 hours just email jay@hostgator.com or send me a private message.

[aradnet]

i have recived email saying
Dear aradnet,We have now activated your account at the HostGator Peer Support Forums. Theforums can be found here:http://forums.hostgator.com/index.phpYour login details are as follows:Username: aradnetPassword: as you entered it when you registeredDon't forget that your password is case sensitive.To edit your profile, please visit this page:http://forums.hostgator.com/profile.php?do=editprofileAll the best,HostGator Peer Support Forums but i still dont see other forums and cant do search

[MachineDog]

NVM looks like you haven't been validated yet. =o