Well, I suppose I could do that, but the problem with that is that there is not really one moment to pick to temporarily open registrations. The initial bulk will probably respond within a week after announcing the forum is open, but what to do with those who don't make it to register within that week? I would find it rather tricky to open up registrations every time a new member wants to join. It's virtually impossible to define a time window for the new member to fill in its registration before registrations close again (s.th. like 'new registrations only fridays from 19 till 22').
I am currently investigating two possible solutions:
- writing some sort of off-forum registration procedure where I can add the initial information and write it to the database and than manually mail all new members their initial login info. Downside of this option is that I would have to deal with all table columns to fill them in correctly to prevent frustrating the database handling of the forum.
- manually adding all new members 'the normal way', i.e. by filling in the registration form myself and let the forum mail the confirmation mail to the new member. This way, all database handling and required fields and stuff is dealt with in the normal way. The only thing I would have to do is restrict the use of new member registration to myself (probably means making it an administrator privilege). This second option will probably take very little extra coding to be effective.
I'm still very much open for other suggestions! Thanks for thinking along!
