Hi Ian.

>It's great that you have set this up, but wouldn't it be better if people didn't have to sign up to access it, or that if you want them to sign up, that they didn't have to use Passport to do so? I'm sure that this will put a number of people off of joining as I know a number of people who avoid these sort of things.

The reason for requiring people to sign up is to prevent the spam that haunts unrestricted sites. The reason Passport is used is because this is a Microsoft-owned site and that's what's used on the site. I agree that some people may be turned off by using Passport, but having had a Passport account for about four years now, I can honestly say it's no big deal.

Doug