Non-Member Access to LDS.org Site

Hi, I wanted to give some feedback that will hopefully make it back to the development team for LDS.org -- regarding access to the site by non-members and their user experience.

If you create an account (not tied to a church membership record) when you log in, in the "Tools" dropdown menu, there are still links to Calendar, Directory, and Classic LDS site, and Patriarchal Blessing. On the Calendar and Directory, if these are chosen, a large Access Denied page is reached. Additionally, with the other respective links, they reach pages that ask for LDS login credentials.

I am a member, but if I weren't a member, seeing these things -- especially the "Access Denied" pages would be a major turn off. Isn't there any way to turn these links off for non-LDS accounts -- again to make the non-member experience more positive and less like they are being denied access to member-only content?

Thanks,

Jaren

jangerbauer wrote:Hi, I wanted to give some feedback that will hopefully make it back to the development team for LDS.org -- regarding access to the site by non-members and their user experience.

The development team might see it here, but that's unlikely. Use the Submit Feedback link at the bottom of the main lds.org page if you want to be sure it will get to them.

jangerbauer wrote:If you create an account (not tied to a church membership record) when you log in, in the "Tools" dropdown menu, there are still links to Calendar, Directory, and Classic LDS site, and Patriarchal Blessing. On the Calendar and Directory, if these are chosen, a large Access Denied page is reached. Additionally, with the other respective links, they reach pages that ask for LDS login credentials.

I am a member, but if I weren't a member, seeing these things -- especially the "Access Denied" pages would be a major turn off. Isn't there any way to turn these links off for non-LDS accounts -- again to make the non-member experience more positive and less like they are being denied access to member-only content?

Every link which is enabled or disabled based on a person's login does affect performance. But then again, clearly there are several links that are indeed visible or invisible based on a person's login, so that performance hit has been deemed to be acceptable in many cases. Technically, it is certainly possible to turn these links off for non-LDS accounts. Do the benefits of such a change justify the development time and possible performance degradation? That's something the development team would have to consider.

aebrown wrote:The development team might see it here, but that's unlikely. Use the Submit Feedback link at the bottom of the main lds.org page if you want to be sure it will get to them.

Thanks for the suggestion.

aebrown wrote:Every link which is enabled or disabled based on a person's login does affect performance. But then again, clearly there are several links that are indeed visible or invisible based on a person's login, so that performance hit has been deemed to be acceptable in many cases. Technically, it is certainly possible to turn these links off for non-LDS accounts. Do the benefits of such a change justify the development time and possible performance degradation? That's something the development team would have to consider.

Agreed that performance and additional development time do factor into this scenario. I'm not a hard core coder, but am familiar enough with web development that my presumption would be that this wouldn't result in any major code modification -- just removing a few links from the menu. Even if that ended up being too complicated, at least change the "Access Denied" page could be modified to something a little more friendlier -- like: "Our apoligies -- you've reached a page that is only accessible to LDS church members" or something that (in my opinion) doesn't come off as hostile and potentially ruining the positive user experience.