Is there a chance that one day we will be able to use gmail or yahoo accounts ?
I'm a member since December 2008 and I own a 2004 NSX, when I was registering my account i used an email that i don't check at all because my gmail account was not accepted. I'm worried that one day i will be added to this list
Maybe there is another way to verify if an account is real or not?
Here is the issue. I want accounts to be tied to a real person. Now that doesn't mean I feel the need to know everyone's personal info, but with yahoo or gmail people can just chain webmail addresses and they are not necessarily directly anchored to anything. With a work or school or ISP address, there is generally a real person directly tied to the email address.. I don't know who that person is, but at least someone does.
Another way I can achieve a similar result is to take a payment of some type through PayPal so someone's account is tied to something real like a bank account or credit card on other side of PayPal. However, because of the way vBulletin works, I think that means I either have to stop blocking webmail addresses for registration or I have to manually handle a lot of email address changes, lost passwords, etc.
If I allow webmail for registration, I'd have to change it so EVERY person who registered had to pay some token amount like $1 through the subscription system and have that automatically promote their account to a level where they could post. I'm not a fan of that at all, and it will deter a huge number of people from ever posting.
If I do it manually, e.g. you are already registered with a "real" email address and want to switch to gmail, then I'd have to set up a form or something and manually edit your account to use the new address. Then I need to have the system send you an activation email to verify that it's a working address. If there is an issue there we are now trading emails to get it resolved. If you ever need to reset your password I have to do it for you because the gmail address is on the block list so I don't accept it for password reset. This is very time consuming when you multiply it out by thousands of people over years. It's not really how I want to spend my time, so if I were going to offer that I'd be inclined to charge a fee and pay someone else to handle it. That's not really ideal to me either, because it feels like nickle and diming which I can't stand.
I really wish there was a way to allow people to change to webmail after they had validated their account with a "real" email address. Unfortunately vBulletin just doesn't work that way. I am open to suggestions of other / better ways to achieve my goal stated in the first paragraph.