Earlier this summer, Paul shared the results from our first two Product Stories experiments. We’ll have more to share from follow-up experiments soon, but today, we wanted to share a new feature with you – secure, passwordless login for forums.
Login help requests make up 20% of Threadloom Newsletter replies. Many of these requests come from users who want to reply to a post in the newsletter, but are having trouble logging in or resetting their password. We believed that if we could bridge this gap, we could address a pain point for admins and users, and drive more engagement with Newsletter.
Using technology from Google Cloud and Auth0, a trusted authentication provider, we created a secure, passwordless login option designed to make it easier for forum users to stay logged in. The feature is called Primary Login, and you can see it live on The Admin Zone.
Primary Login enables users to transition seamlessly from Newsletter to your forum so they can participate in conversations without struggling with a login form. When a user clicks on the Primary Login button, they’re prompted to enter their email address, where we send them a confirmation email. Once the user clicks on the confirmation link in the email, they’re logged in to the forum. That’s it – no fumbling through password managers or trying to remember forgotten passwords.
In addition, users who don’t already have a forum account can register for a new forum account, with their email address pre-filled in, and without needing to generate a password. Every new forum account is created in the forum database and controlled by the forum admin. We invite you to take it for a test spin on The Admin Zone.
Primary Login is currently in beta. We’re measuring the impact of Primary Login on post activity and reactivating lapsed forum users. Stay tuned for an update on this soon. We’re also developing assets to make Primary Login easier for forum users to identify. In the meantime, if you have questions or are curious if this might work for your forum, feel free to drop me a line at chris at threadloom dot com.
Forums were the first social network I was exposed to. I could connect with knowledgeable people across the globe. I eventually started building my own communities in areas that were interesting to me. After 16 years of sales and acquisition, I was responsible for over 100 active communities. The most challenging task of managing a community is to see it grow through curation of content. This is why I am thrilled to work as a part of the Threadloom team, to help admins in different verticals bring their best content to the forefront of the Internet.
