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Coming from someone who's done almost the same thing, you need to remove the barrier to entry (signup) - for some reason beer drinkers won't fill in forms. Allow twitter/Facebook signin or even anonymous ratings- a signup form was the single biggest mistake I made with my site (and I made a lot of mistakes)

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Going one step further, when a user goes to your site for the first time, create an account for them behind the scenes. This will enable them to track beers immediately.

Later on, you can prompt them for an email address or password. For example, if a new user adds X beers, open a lightbox that says "Mmmm, beer. To make sure you don't lose your list, type in your email address and a password."

This is beneficial because by the time they've added X beers, they have more of a connection with the site, and likely to not want to lose the info they've plugged in.

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