Newbie seeking advice

[spazlabz]

One quick question. Do you think it would help to offer a temp pass to the membership area. One that I could change say every other day or something.

If this were my site I wouldn't give them a pass without having them sign up for it IF I were going to require them to get a free membership at all. The only reason I can see for requiring someone to sign in is to harvest their addresses. I wouldnt sell the info or anything like that, but I would send periodical mails lets call them newsletters, in order to spam them subtle like with my sponsor codes. If i didnt intend to do that then I would personally lose the entire sign in thing. If you give them a free pass and they get into the 'members area' and dont see a mind boggling amount of content you might lose them for good. So if you want them to sign in, keep the addresses, and remind them that they have this free membership to this growing community of open minded people. This would motivate them to continue to visit. These are all just my own opinions on the subject, but it is how I would go about building up a site of this nature

spaz