Forcing users to register?

Do you think it's a bad idea to force members to register? What I mean is setting the forum permissions where guests cannot read topics. Some people think it's a good idea to force users to register but this could lead to inactive members just wanted to read topics.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

I think its a bad idea as they dont know what your forum is truely about. I always kept my content public.

 

I think it's a bad idea, I always allow guests to read topics in my forum.

 

It's not a good idea at all. It doesn't really show there is an open community, but more a private, unwelcoming community.

 

dang, thats why I wasn't getting much visitors,

oh well, but some sites are successful in making guests register,

but you have to offer them something to convince them to register.

or do an instant redirect to the register page,

if they try to view a topic.

 

I think it's something best to use sparingly. I keep open many of my forums but certain areas that I deem valuable content I require registration to view. At the same time though you are blocking search bots from indexing your pages. So it's a toss up. I do hate sites that don't allow any content viewing without registration and normally just go elsewhere.

 

I also agree that it's a bad idea for the same reasons - guests don't have any idea what your forum is about if they can't view anything, and search bots also can't index your pages, which will limit the ability for people to find your forum through search engines.

 

I also think it's a bad idea.

 

It depends on how attractive is your forum name. If its something thats interesting, people will register even if not forced. But you can always do some tactics to show the topic names but not the content... The would eventually register...

 

The best way to get users is to allow them to see what's being discussed. I refuse to register just to find out that I'm not interested in participating in discussions on that site, especially since most forums don't seem to have an option to allow you to delete your own account (I don't know if this is a limitation of the software itself though).

 

Keep your content visible to guests, but make them sign up to post. And it's good to have some areas that are private for members only or just for members that have reached a certain post count. Better yet is to have some "premium content" areas where people are required to purchase a membership to access.

 

A better approach might be forcing users to register to see links, this mainly works on download based forums though.

 

This idea can work only on Warez forums where the people are desperate for free stuff and they are most likely to register .

 

Not really, it can be many other things. Think about some arcade website. Have some competitions, show them the results, but dont let them store the scores, works great!

 

VERY bad idea ... If your forum has good content, it will automatically convert one time visitors to regular visitors to members.
In case you "force" them to register, you might think you have a good enough number of members coming your way, but a lot of them will turn inactive. You also might falsely assume you are running a good community when in fact, it's not good enough to attract members by itself.
Of course, search engines will HATE you and so will people like me.

 

I don't like forums that hide all their content from guests and force you to register to read anything. I think that most forums should be open to the public - maybe have some member-only forums as an incentive for signing up but the majority of forums should be viewable by default.