Guest Gate (Sign Up Popup Plugin)

Plugin
1

In April 2022, the Guest Gate plugin was converted into a theme component by @Don. This plugin is now deprecated.

This is a more permanent post for a plugin that @vinothkannans created and I forked recently. Many thanks to @vinothkannans for doing the hard work of wiring up the main logic, @ljpp for stirring the original conversation, and @DiscourseMetrics.com for providing the impetus behind a customized modal.

You have two main gate options:

  1. Generic gate
  2. Custom gate

And tertiary options:

  1. Number of topic views until gate displays. After the gate first appears, it appears randomly between 1 and this number.
  2. Disable x button
  3. Various styling options for custom gate

Here is a screenshot of the admin panel:

image.png1516Ă—1400 116 KB

And of the plugin in action:

image.png2775Ă—1144 309 KB

image.png2212Ă—910 198 KB

The desire for a plugin like this was discussed in this topic. I hope to add functionality as time goes on, but here is a short list:

  • Timer
  • Inverse Timer (Read time > t)
  • Display on every page
  • Stubbornness (after x many times closed, give up asking during this session/use default discourse functionality)
  • Track how often it gets closed, other metrics
  • Track whether user signed up through overlay (could just put user in specific group)
  • Appear given a specific url (eg https://yourdiscourse.com?iscool&referrer=reddit). Like an invite link, but could put signups in particular group, like the above
55 Likes
2

This is the best solution to boost signup, because visitors want to “see” before “buy”.

I used this method on my forum for 1 year. And now i have 35 signups per day, instead of 3-4 before the plugin.

10 Likes
3

Interesting and thanks for sharing. I don’t mean to sound skeptical, but this increase in signups may relate to other factors including the organic growth of your forum over time.

Can I propose a better test? If you were to alternate between Guest Gate and normal signups each week for a month we’d have some good comparative data to show that Guest Gate works.

5 Likes
4

The subscription bump was from one day to the next (not after one year) :wink:

You know, with the SEO, many came to read about their keyword search, but don’t want to signup. It’s a good way to convert search traffic.

4 Likes
5

Have an option to disable for GoogleBot?

This plugin is a good idea, thanks for share it.

6 Likes
6

I made 2 more additions today

  1. Per @Fer_Nando’s suggestion, I added a list of bots that should not open the modal. I found the list in this Stackoverflow answer
  2. I added gate_show_only_once as an option, which will, as it says, only show the user the gate once per hard refresh.

I’ll keep my eye on the poll for the next feature to add. :grin:

7 Likes
7

Thanks for the sweet plugin! I’ve installed it on my community and really like it. :rocket:

Those are unfortunately all equally good ideas. :slight_smile: All worthy of implementation, and I couldn’t tell you the priority of each.

4 Likes
8

I guess no need to exclude bots here. Since Discourse uses crawler layout for bots. Also there is function to detect bots and layout. Check below

4 Likes
9

I appreciate this @jgujgu’s forked plugin and I recommend it because of his active development in new features. Also if anyone need simplified version of this plugin with minimal features you can still use my original repo at https://github.com/vinothkannans/discourse-guest-gate. It will give you output like in screenshot below and you can configure how many topics a guest can view before displaying the guest gate.

screenshot.png1366Ă—768 142 KB

10 Likes
10

Thanks for your work!

11

@vinothkannans i want the same popup plugin but not for sign up, but for facebook page likes, or for twitter followers. i can pay to you for this.

Please check this.

12

Hi!
The plugin has incorrect (outdated?) modal.hbs template:

      <div class="modal-inner-container">
        <div class="modal-header">
          <a class="close" {{action "closeModal"}}>{{fa-icon "times"}}</a>
          <h3>{{title}}</h3>
          <div class="clearfix"></div>
        </div>

The .close anchor should be wrapped in div with modal-close class.

It has several consequence:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/dialog-close-button-design/60727/
https://meta.discourse.org/t/dialog-and-esc-handling/60725

PR: https://github.com/jgujgu/discourse-guest-gate/pull/3

6 Likes
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@jgujgu
@Shrike
@vinothkannans

Could you please remove the bottom block that says “Log in | Create New Account”

Reason:
Users are clicking on that link and then in the next screen, they are finding the close button. That way they click on the close button and read the content without registering for an account.

3 Likes
14

Just updated to Discourse v1.9.0.beta11 +12 - this plugin breaks site.

4 Likes
15

I did the installation and broke the site. :slightly_frowning_face:

The site has been left blank for members, nothing uploaded.

Only I with my admin account logged in I was able to access the site normally.

VERSION: v1.9.0.beta11 +12

4 Likes
16

Once I logged out of admin I had the same issue - then couldn’t log back in. SSH in - remove plugin - rebuild.

17

I also just removed this plugin.
After the new Discourse Update - I’m getting a blank page - because of this plugin - So, I had to remove this plugin to fix it.

@jgujgu
Thought of letting you know - so that you can fix it, if you have some free time.

3 Likes
18

I’d love to know when this works again! I’d love to have this working on my site!!

3 Likes
19

We’re also facing the same problem after the latest update. From our end, it was possible to fix, by disabling the plugin in the Admin-panel.

3 Likes
20

Seems like @jgujgu has abandoned this. The website he was using this on is no longer operational.

@vinothkannans are you still maintaining your original plugin for this?