Site Tours / Member Area

[sockstars]

I've noticed a few sites that use their site tour as the actual members area - no logging into a "/members" dir, but getting straight to the content from the front of the site.

I've thought about doing this for a while on one of my site's but wondered what anyone else's thoughts were on this - showing direct links to content and all - any advise/views pls guys would be appreciated.

many thanks

socks

[basschick]

i reviewed a site like that the other day. what i especially didn't like about it is that there's a link to the join page and another to the preview pages when members are searching the content. i think having a special member area is like having a club for your members.

one advantage that i DO see to it is that it allows surfers to fully see the member area, but you can do that with several different cms's or even just by mirroring the member area.