Agree with all, but just curious as to your preference for login combo? I tend to use and prefer email/password and sites like Facebook and Twitter use the same.
Never been a fan of username/alias (too much variation per site - can never remember if I used John, JohnD, JohnDoe, JohnDoe77, etc) and no one can remember every account number they might have across the net.
Email address sign-ins have lots of problems with respect to support, and you have to factor in your support costs.
The automatic verification of the user identity is a bonus but for most sites you don't really need that.
In the case of this particular website, which already seems to have a bunch of free options, the 'freemium' model would seem to work a lot better, get them in small steps at the time and make a conversion funnel.
Goal 1 would be to get the user to visit several times
Goal 2 would be to get them to invest a bit of their identity in the site, make them a 'registered user'
Goal 3 would be an upsell, give them access to premium content for a fee
It's a tough model to market, but because you have a number of steps you can automate the analysis of how effective the various steps of the funnel are. By the time you are ready to ask for card&expiry you have built up a trust relationship already and 90% of the signup process is over.
I built a custom publishing system last year for a group of newspapers (some upgrading their sites, some shifting online for the first time) and used email/password. Those sites have free articles and then others only available to logged in users (though it's free to register).
I'd imagine that username-based logins would have problems of their own? A lot of people would end up with very little idea of what username they had used or should use.
If you need to ask for an email address to run newsletters, alerts and the like, it just seems to me that email/password eliminates one extra item from the sign-up form?
I have logins at many sites (like most people here, I'm sure) and a number of email addresses too, but always find it quicker to login with email/password than with a username (e.g., Yahoo's login for Flickr) and the slowest on average would be those using account numbers; I know my betting site ID by heart, and one at a software distributor client, but I have to look up the one for my domain registrar every time.
I have a single username (barrkel) but multiple email addresses (depending on degree of personal connection, so bulk email lists / notifications go in one category, etc.), so the problem is rather reversed for me.
How many people are likely to think ahead to work with a unique-enough username though? Also, to make it something that's suitable to use in casual and business contexts?
We already have a tonne of hotmamma58s are out there, I bet.
Never been a fan of username/alias (too much variation per site - can never remember if I used John, JohnD, JohnDoe, JohnDoe77, etc) and no one can remember every account number they might have across the net.