I was wondering if I should allow guests to post so that there would be more interest and posts in my new forums? Or should I make them register to have more people registered?
I doubt it will help. Most probably this will attract only spammers. Quality posters and interesting discussions will attract more visitors to register and become part of the community.
Well, ask yourself this: If you came across board that is so so, would YOU register? Don't make them work for it until you have a good board going. It just makes sense to give them a temporary free pass.
If you allow guests to post, your forum will likely be highly spammed once spam bots find your forum, it's like a dream coming true for spam bots.
Depends on the forum, I have one that everyone comes and reads and hardly anyone joins. Some people play around with member only areas and contests for members. I would not leave your forum open for anyone to post, the spammers will eat you alive. A couple of months ago I helped a friend start one and the spammers would join and create some nasty porn post with all sorts of images. Any visitor to the site would see the spam content and leave without joining......unless they were spammers and then they would invite their friends and have a picnic. If you stumble on a way to entice people into joining let me know.
Most people are lazy. Do the math. Many smart Webmasters who now have successful boads gave a temporary free pass. They waited for the board to get rocking first. Again, it's just common sense. And as for this spam? Big deal. I have heard of this as a reason not to allow free posts. I have yet to see a forum or hear of a Webmaster who is so invaded that he is forced to change this thinking. And I am not talking about a few spam threads here and there, either. Folks, having a few spam threads every week, or, hell, every couple of days is not an end all. Besides, allowing visitors to post without signing up is just temporary. Jeez, are people this lazy that they can't delete the few spam threads that come up now and then? Don't answer that. Experiment with it. Find out which is best for you.
Having guests able to post will only invite spammers in do time (Not right away, but eventually you might see a few guests posting ton's of porn links everywhere) but how will you contact your members to inform them of special offer's or forum updates? Yes you could create a special forum to post updates, but i would never allow guests to post. (Just my own opinion) Give the guests a reason to want to join the forum. Have small contests, like sig or the week or month...etc Doesn't matter how many members you have, if the loyal ones stay active, more people will jump on board with them.
My old hosts forum has it's pre-sales questions forum open to guests. This allows a fair amount of laziness for those that want it, allows people to not bothering to log in to ask a pre-sales question, and has other perks. Though personally, I'd never do it on a grand scale.
I decided to let guests post. I'm not scared about spam because Asimnat (or whatever filter WP uses that is also available of SMF) seems to do a good job, and if it becomes out of hand, I'll just change it. I am online often enough throughout the day that it won't stay a problem for long if it is.
Depending on the forum software you are using, you can turn on CAPTCHA for guest posting. But the problem I see on forums with guest posts is that the same guest sometimes uses different usernames for their posts and it makes the threads confusing.
I believe its a bad move if your forum gets popular.. as it will really attract spammers and its a pain to clean it all out