Welcome Messages

Hi,

I was wondering if we could get a show of hands who uses the welcome messages "Hello, you appear to be browsing as a guest, blah, blah ... " whether in the form of default text, modified text, or an image, and who has gotten rid of them altogether?

Briansol mentioned that he did not and I felt that partially validated my suspicion that those who want to participate will regardless of such a message, and that the messages may just be wastes of space that push everything below the fold for guests (for me at least) and increase the fat to meat ratio.

What does everyone else think about them? Do you have them installed? Have they been helpful? Have you gotten rid of them?

Thanks.

I had it in text and I took a screenshot of the text to make an image
Im working on a nice welcome image in the mean time. I also have a annoying yellow bar at the top Sound District - Music Networking Community Forum

Its still being decided if thats stay up or going down.

We have it displayed to display only for about the first 5 clicks by guest users, after which time it disappears. The goal of keeping it is to draw new visitors directly to some of our higher priority content, which for us is usually release announcements, etc.

But it gets removed to improve the user experience. The 5 pages before it disappears helps to give them an opportunity to see it before it finally disappears.

If you choose some of your best content, I think it's very essential. It's a hook that should have wide appear on your site. It could help some of your search visitors to stay on the site rather than bouncing back to Google. But it has to be motivating/interesting stuff. If it's only to encourage registration, or link to the FAQ then I don't like using it for that.

Joe any idea how to go about doing this with the welcome header hack (running 3.6.11)? Currently it has the option to show the message repeatedly or once.

perhaps i was a little mis-leading.

I DO run a 'welcome header'. But it's short, blunt, stands out, doesn't talk about useless stuff like 'reading the faq' and gives quick and easy access to login or register right there and there.

it's not a plugin... all i do is an if condition in the nav bar template.

Originally Posted by Yogesh Sarkar

Joe any idea how to go about doing this with the welcome header hack (running 3.6.11)? Currently it has the option to show the message repeatedly or once.

We have probably done several customizations. I'll have to check on that.