” From there, you are redirected to another page where you must select a password and provide a valid email address. You must be mindful of where you click on this page. Embedded within the registration form are links to third-party adult sites. If you inadvertently click on one of those, you will be redirected to the registration page of those sites. Unlike BookofMatches, those sites do require payment.

The final part of the registration process requires you to fill out a brief questionnaire regarding your physical attributes, location, and profession. You can also write a brief paragraph introducing yourself. This appears on your member profile. One note of caution, if the registration form keeps returning an error regarding the name of your city – click on the hyperlink that reads “find your city.” This will open a separate window with a listing of all of the cities in your state as stored on the BookofMatches database. Our testers found that not all cities are listed. In those cases, choose the one nearest you. The system will not continue with your registration otherwise.

Once you submit the questionnaire you will be prompted to upload your profile image. You are given the option to upload as many as three images in total. Keep in mind that these images must adhere to the BookofMatches rules. This means that your face must be clearly visible, you must be the only person appearing in the shot, and there must not be any nudity. All pictures will be reviewed by the site before being posted on your profile. During our tests, this process took as little as 30 minutes and as long as two days.

– Features –

BookofMatches offers its users a search feature as well as email and instant chat communication. We were pleasantly surprised that a free site would offer a decent communication platform. Yes, the interface looks dated and the instant chat feature did stall a few times during our tests, but considering this is 100 percent free, we would not complain.

The site also offers a rating system. In order to use this feature you must have at least one approved image on your profile, Once you do so, you can click on the “Ratings” tab in the navigation menu in order to view your profile rating as well as to rate the profile images of other members.

The “Friends” section allows you to view the status updates of other members whom you have friended. It is not as robust as a modern social network, but it does allow you to keep tabs with all of the friends that you make on the site. The feature reminds you of a very early Friendster – if you’re old enough to remember that.

– User Experience –

Sporadic bouts with slow loading speeds during searches and an antiquated navigation menu can make for a frustrating experience if you are used to smoothloading and speedy dating sites. From our point of view, those small technical problems can be forgiven on a free site.

In terms of the quality of the search results and communication with other members – we felt that this was hampered by the fact that it is a free site. The low barrier to entry makes BookofMatches heavy with fake and abandoned profiles. We found that we could curtail some of these by filtering out those without a profile picture. However, it is our estimate that one-third of the members on the site are inactive.