When I first set up this site, I configured the New User settings so that people could register for an account but I would have to approve any new accounts before the user could gain advanced access to the site - to blog, for example. I want my family, friends, and colleagues with my same interests to be able to post their thoughts on the site. However, that experiment is now over - I found at first that some new account requests were coming from robots, but lately I'm annoyed by the number of requests I'm getting from people who are interested in "cars" or a jumble of characters, and that people were claiming to be my family, friends, colleagues, or clients when - clearly - they were not.

So, as of now, if you want me to set up an account for you, please use the contact form or one of my email addresses (if you know one!) to ask me to do that. I will follow through if I know you, or if you send me a working email address and links to web pages convince me you are interested in discussing melanoma, drupal, or publishing/journalism/blogging.

I consider this experiment with allowing people to set up their own accounts a success even though I'm changing course. It gave me a chance to see how this work on a client's site if the client wanted to encourage a lot of users and traffic on a site. I know how that works now. I'm done with that experiment!

For this site, my main purpose was to keep my family and friends updated on Robert's melanoma treatment - and it's served that purpose well. A lot of my friends and family have registered already, and more folks who haven't registered come to the site from time to time for updates. I will continue to use it that way, and to research other topics related to melanoma. (For example, I plan to write about immune response - it's so interesting to me that Robert's body tried to get rid of the cancer on its own, and I want to know how we can keep his immune system fighting hard once the vaccine trial is over.) 

I also encourage users who want to share information or experiences about melanoma, journalism, blogging, and/or drupal to participate in any discussions that interest them.

I'm not particularly interested in giving a soapbox to people who want to hype their own sites or discuss topics I don't find engaging. I also am concerned about the possibility that unknown users would access my website for other purposes. There's so much devilry going on on the web now - I don't want to encourage that here.

So, as of now, I'll set up accounts. I may still be annoyed by people seeking accounts, but at least I can delete their emails without having to remove their website accounts.