Better Know A Website: Signing Up

Editor's Note: The SBN tech team has endowed us with an amazing site platform with a lot of great features that help foster a strong community. Over the summer we'll be highlighting them as a refresher for older commenters and as an introduction to the tonnes of new members we've picked up over the summer. You can Better Know A Website some more by clicking that link.

Don't just do it just because Wendel compels you although that's probably the safe thing to do. There's a lot of good that comes from signing up and we'll go over it after the jump.

The first step is easy enough. Click on either of the highlighted buttons and you're one step closer to being able to telling us all what you think.

Now you've got options:

1. Do you already have a Yahoo! account? Well, choose this door so that there's one less password that you need to remember.
2. Do you know what an OpenID is? Well, then this option is for you.
3. Just choose a username and get going.

You'll notice that there is no option to just mash your keyboard. I think that we all know who needs that option.

So now you're all set up and you can write comments, write fanposts, and post comments but let's say that you are a shrinking violet, what benefit do you get? Well, you get a much easier surfing experience without ever having to interact with the members of the asylum.

Know when there are new comments

Every post, fanpost, and fanshot has a tally of the comments but you'll only know if there are any new ones if you are registered and signed in. How else will you know if you've read every single thing on the site?

The left is what the unregistered lurker sees every day and I weep for you all. On the right, you can kind of see that unread comments are shaded in yellow (#2). As you read the comments with the hotkeys they'll go from yellow to white. And what are these hotkeys?

Press C to tab through new comments, Shift-C to tab backwards, X to mark a comment as read, and Shift-A to mark all read. Z will simultaneously mark and tab forward, and R will reply to the comment that has focus.

Now, apparently some of the regulars weren't even aware of these hotkeys. These are vital to reading any thread with a lot of participation like a game day thread or any breaking news thread. And if you start getting behind just hit Shift-A and you start fresh. Z will literally change your life.

All of that and the chance at more can be yours just by registering.

Finish this sentence:I lurk because ________________________