Hey, having skimmed over this thread it looks like we're kind of in the same boat (you're obviously much further ahead), as I too am shoring up my PHP skills with the hopes of turning my page into a Faucet. Your model is interesting, I'm not sure that I've seen a threshold based on the actual number of claims before (as opposed to a balance, in Satoshi). Hope it works out for you! I don't need to tell you what's missing from your page that other successful ones have, I'm sure you're working on it. (One quick question, though, does the "fails" counter reset upon withdrawal as well?). I think you're right to go with a threshold system, at least at first. If I ever get my Faucet running I certainly would be too paranoid of bots to just let auto-payments run. And someone up there was right, I feel like it's the auto-pay one-page FaucetBOX pages that are here today, gone tomorrow, whereas login sites last a lot longer (once or twice fairly recently on this forum there were login faucets posted that just turned out to be scams outright, and I feel like the memory of this is burned into some people's minds (I guess myself included, having been burned reaaal good by one of them).

So, I guess I just wanted to say that you should stick with the threshold if that's what your comfortable with, obviously all users just want their coins NOW :p And, you know, good work and good luck! Hope to join you and the ranks of faucet-operators (Foperators?) soon enough. Cheers.