Sometimes an afterthought, sometimes the only good-looking page on a site: registration pages are the heart and soul of user participation. Maximizing the completion rate and minimizing abandonment of your signup form is a crucial part of getting users talking, especially if you don't allow anonymously posted content on your site (an increasingly common thing as spam continues to flourish).

Web 2.0 ushered in a lot of changes to registration pages, the most notable concept being simplicity. This is the executive summary:  read more »