I'll definitely put #1-3 on my ToDo list, thanks. As for #4, my current strategy is to provide one option and one option only to the user on the home page: signing up. I believe I got the idea for this strategy from 37signals. Does anyone have any insights as to whether this works in the real world?
Another option is 'lazy signup', as demonstrated with some YC startups like posterous. Get the user starting to use the site and only then ask for an email address, username, password etc.
My hunch is that in the real world if it's "signup or die" most people choose the latter.
