Tour suggestions
 

I've been thinking of making all of my site available for preview. So instead of about 100 vid/picset preview thumbs that I have on my current tour, the surfer would see about 800 preview-thumbs of all the content they'll get.

Does this make sense and has anyone tried this?

Sounds like a bold move. If your content is solid, then yea I would try it. Maybe run it for a month and see how it goes. I ultimately think it's more about layout/design then it is overloading with content though. There is a tease/curiosity factor to take into consideration. But again if you think your content is the shit, then try it.

Preview linked to members
 

Is this still a good idea in 2009, having all tour/preview thumbnails linked directly to the members area content, and have the whole site viewable in thumbnails. Or would it bring in more members if you just did a tour with samples instead?

What is your advice (thoughts or facts)

the best way would be to try it of course ;)

it depends a lot on the quality of your content too.