Restricted Forums and Google Indexing

As far as I can tell, if you restrict a forum so that only some members can view(say members with more than 10 posts), then google can't index the pages and they will not be in serps.

Is this correct and if so is there a way to get around it. That way I can let the content get people on the site but they would need to join!

 

Let guest see the thread title, but not the actual content. That way google will at the very least index the title of the thread.

 

Good idea but I don't have the ability to do that!

 

Invision Power Board has this function. You Can Allot Search Engines a user group but when guest come u can get them registered..

What software do u use

 

vBulletin has the functionality as well.

 

Good idea but useless, because if someone searches about that title on Google and reaches on the forum he will have no option to read the details.

Do you think he will reach your forum and when not find the content he will browse your forum? or even join? Never, it really annoys users when they land on some page and there is no content which they were searching for.

On my forum I have set some forums that cannot be viewed by Guests and search engines, simple.

 

It's not entirely useless and does indeed yield quite a few registrations. On one of my forums, we have an international directory of providers for the object of our niche. It's the only one on the entire internet. We allow guests to see thread titles - which is a breakdown of the provider's location and store/business name (e.g. United States - New York - Albany - Store Name) and members are required to be registered to see the contents which are the store's details and user feedback. It works quite well, to be honest..

 

I see the value in it but how do you do it?

 

I'm only familiar with vBulletin, which I am positive you can do it with. Is vB what you use?

 

I got and old version forum phpBB 2.0.21

 

Update it to phpBB3, that version has member-like control for bots as well as other improvements over phpBB2.

 

Do you realize that phpbb2 is no longer supported? Any security issues that found will not be fixed by the official phpbb developers.

I highly recommend that you either get phpbb3 installed, or migrate to smf, mybb, vbulletin or invision power board.

 

Nick. I found this forum while conducting a Google search on the ability to make forum thread titles visible to guests but not the post content. I run vb3.7.3 and do not see where this option is available.

I can make a forum title visible but not the thread titles. The guest only sees "private". Any help wuld be wonderful.

Thanks,

Robert

 

Until the site is more sucessful I'll resist the urge to change and give myself any unnessary grief!

 

Using vBulletin, set up the permissions so that guests "can view forum" and "cannot view thread content". That should do it.