Earlier this summer (2019), I made the unfortunate decision to block new user sign-ups on this website. After 5 years of interacting with so many of you on the forum, this was not a decision I wanted to make. My hand was forced by the number of spam user sign-ups and spam comments that I was having to manage and delete. Every day there were new fake accounts! Sometimes many per day. I would need to chase down the trash comments they added, delete them, and then go and delete the user account also. Trying to keep on top of this on a daily basis was a real pain, and was making me lose interest in continuing with something I've tirelessly built over the past 5 years!

In the past I have tried various things to stop the spam. I bought spam software to auto-detect this junk, but it did not work very well. Another thing I tried was managing sign-ups via a Google form, but that was a very manual process and resulted in readers having to wait hours or days before being able to interact on the site. Nothing was working, so I went back to giving the best experience I could to real users, and just managed all the spam manually. Ugh!

I have toyed with the idea of charging a nominal sign-up fee in the past. Each time I did so, I felt like I couldn't justify it to the readers, so I scrapped the plans. Well today, with my fight with spam nearing it's end, I feel like I can justify it.

I sincerely hope you don't see this small fee as a way to limit access to paying readers.
My goal with this website has always been, and remains, to provide a quality website to you (the reader), and to allow as many people as possible connect with each other on here. But I only want those of you who are serious about moving to Ireland adding comments and forum posts.
I've spent way too many hours creating and maintaining this site to allow spammers and spam-bots ruin what I've created; what we have created together. Literally hundreds of you have spent much of their time adding value of their own, with extremely interesting and informative insights into what they've been through during the 'move to Ireland' journey. I'm not prepared to just cast it aside! By adding this fee to the sign-up process, I can guarantee a truly great reader experience, free from everything that should not be on here.

To offset this fee, you can download my Moving To Ireland FAQ Guide free of charge after you register.

Lastly, I have polled a few recent folks who signed up for access, and they reinforced my belief that those of you who are serious about a move to Ireland, and want to interact via the forum, will not mind paying a small fee to do so.

As always, I look forward to hearing from you, and all about the things that we can help with, as you make your transition.

Thank you!
Liam

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