Hey guys -

A few days ago, a Hellobee member flagged some potential points of confusion with our registration process:

1) She was confused over which fields were required versus optional.
2) She also wasn't sure which fields from the registration process might be published to her public profile.

First, to clarify: only the username and email fields are required (well, your password too). All other fields are optional, and if you fill them out they will appear on your profile.

To help convey this to new members, our team just made the following changes to the registration process:

* We removed some text that said "* THESE FIELDS ARE REQUIRED" (in reference to the username and email, which were marked with an asterisk). If someone doesn't fill out the username and email, we'll give them a warning then.
* We grouped together all of the optional fields, and clearly labeled them as "optional."
* To be more specific, we actually labeled the optional fields with the phrase "OPTIONAL PUBLIC PROFILE" so that people can see that the fields are both optional and would appear in your public profile (if you choose to fill them in, that is).

Here is a screenshot.

Let us know what you think of the changes!

Thanks,
Mr. Bee

ps We'll also be adding a link to Gravatar from your profile, so it's a bit easier to find out where to edit or delete your Gravatar.

pps One last note, on the subject of privacy. I want to reiterate that we definitely urge all Hellobee members to take steps to keep your identity private! Towards that end, we have programmed a name change feature and allow all members to request one username change. Please take advantage of this if your username can somehow be tied to your real-life identity:

http://help.hellobee.com/board/username