Well, I don’t know about a lot, as long time users will recall that that was originally how the member module worked, and it requires a lot of building on your part to get the pieces and pages to show where you want them and make sure you aren’t missing any features or functionality. Oddly enough, the complexity of that method is one of the factors that led to the current solution (and makes sharing themes possible). And of course, Solspace’s User module does not automatically update with ExpressionEngine and does not benefit from enhancements, changes, and security made to EE’s membership code unless Solspace updates it. I’m not knocking the module or Solspace who is a trusted, partnered developer, but those are likely the very reasons the module comes with the price tag that it has, as it is certainly a handful for them to support.
It can certainly be overwhelming at first, but this is largely due to how many small parts are necessary to form the whole. The Minimalist’s themes (search the forums or EE blog for this theme) may be a better starting point for you for the member template markup if you’re looking more for something that is stripped bare as a starting point.
