# Using Rails to Kill Your Signup Forms

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-rails-to-kill-your-signup-forms/177688>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [October 21, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-rails-to-kill-your-signup-forms/177688 "2009-10-21T23:59:54Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![logan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/278dde/32.png) [@logan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/logan)\
**Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-rails-to-kill-your-signup-forms/177688/1 "2009-10-21T23:59:54Z")

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Even though the gradual engagement meme has been around for a while,  
and everyone just hates signup forms, they just seem to keep popping  
up like a bad habit. My site, [Newsforwhatyoudo.com](http://Newsforwhatyoudo.com) was one of the  
guilty parties. We saw users coming back to the site repeatedly, but  
not signing up. The percentage that looked at the signup form and then  
bolted was uncomfortably high. It was time to kill the signup form.  
This blog post documents how we implemented gradual engagement using  
Ruby on Rails and restful authentication.

For the full article, see

[http://blog.henriquez.net/2009/08/kill-your-signup-form-with-rails.html](http://blog.henriquez.net/2009/08/kill-your-signup-form-with-rails.html)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![logan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/278dde/32.png) [@logan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/logan)\
**Post date:** [October 22, 2009, 3:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-rails-to-kill-your-signup-forms/177688/2 "2009-10-22T15:37:15Z")

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logan wrote:

> Even though the gradual engagement meme has been around for a while,  
> and everyone just hates signup forms, they just seem to keep popping  
> up like a bad habit. My site, [Newsforwhatyoudo.com](http://Newsforwhatyoudo.com) was one of the  
> guilty parties. We saw users coming back to the site repeatedly, but  
> not signing up. The percentage that looked at the signup form and then  
> bolted was uncomfortably high. It was time to kill the signup form.  
> This blog post documents how we implemented gradual engagement using  
> Ruby on Rails and restful authentication.
> 
> For the full article, see
> 
> [http://blog.henriquez.net/2009/08/kill-your-signup-form-with-rails.html](http://blog.henriquez.net/2009/08/kill-your-signup-form-with-rails.html)

+1

I actually ran into this recently with  
[http://www.open.collab.net/servlets/TLogin](http://www.open.collab.net/servlets/TLogin). Why would anyone require a  
signup form for downloading open source software. That was so annoying  
to me I simply refused to sign up and found another solution.

[MySQL.com](http://MySQL.com) is also a little annoying in this regard, but at least they  
have a link to bypass the signup to get to the actual download.

[http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/mysql-5.1.40-osx10.5-x86\_64.dmg/from/pick](http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/mysql-5.1.40-osx10.5-x86_64.dmg/from/pick)