Now that Burtman.net has been converted from a donation-based site to a completely free one, you might wonder why there is so much content still requiring a login. There are two reasons and they both end up in the same place.

Every day, there are five-to-ten spam signups on the site. These are bots or useless, space-wasting humanoids who want to completely ruin the Burtman experience for everyone, by posting endless garbage in the comments section of every page, spamming users, down-voting everything, and generally winding everybody up with scams, clickbait, phishing and useless nonsense of all kinds.

Allowing guests (users who are not signed in) to post content to the site would mean a full-time job in cleaning up behind these low-life entities. However, by simply not approving their sign-ups, all of that can be skipped, which is why there is zero spam on any of the 500+ pages of this website.

As designer, programmer, writer, editor and moderator, you can see that I put a lot of time and effort into building and maintaining this website and its infrastructure, and into creating and editing my content (which includes detailed technical guides, hundreds of tool profiles, multiple blogs, photography, soundscapes, interviews, creative writing and more). I want people who are interested in van-life, and the freedom of living off grid and on their own terms, to connect with the content and enjoy it, and to engage with me and with each other, because it's through this engagement that I can learn what people are interested in and create more of that content.

Logging in allows you to do that while preventing spammers from ruining it. A free account requires only a name (which you can make up, if you like), an email address (so you can receive password reset emails and any content you opt into), and a comment that shows me you're not one of them. Nothing you enter is ever going to be shared with anyone.

As you will see in the Privacy Policy, I value your time and contributions and respect your privacy and dignity. I'm completely open about how the site operates and welcome questions. And if you ever want to cancel your account, you can do so and it will really be deleted (not just archived or hidden).

When it comes to van life, I've got the goods. :)
Come and see what you've been missing. Sign up for a free account.