user registration question

Hi,

I’m very new to wordpress and I don’t understand the concept of “user”. I thought it would be like in phpbb, where visitors can became users by registering, and then choose avatars, signatures, and get automaticaly loged in if they want.

I would like to allow my future visitors to register, choose nickname avatar etc and then when adding a comment the name and email fields would’nt appear.

Is this possible? I have searched the whole admin pages but only found an option to let non-registered users post comments.

I would like to let users post comments without being registered and if they want click a “register” link.

Am I missing something obvious? Sorry if yes 🙁

Thanks much!