What's Kwackin'?

You've also failed to realise the negative impact of hiding topics on your SE rankings. You have FAR fewer pages to index, and as a result you will find it VERY hard to get decent SE traffic, which is almost essential for forums to do well.

Originally Posted by Oliver You've also failed to realise the negative impact of hiding topics on your SE rankings. You have FAR fewer pages to index, and as a result you will find it VERY hard to get decent SE traffic, which is almost essential for forums to do well.

Incorrect

SE rankings will not be affected whatsoever. All pages will index fine.

Originally Posted by PixelDawn Yes it is

Forums don't die the month they start. Getting one started is harder than it looks.

Originally Posted by Sam Granger Incorrect SE rankings will not be affected whatsoever. All pages will index fine.

With all due respect Sam, are you living in a dream world? Unless your robots file specifies indexing for SE's over users, then pages that are unavailable will not be indexed.

Originally Posted by Oliver With all due respect Sam, are you living in a dream world? Unless your robots file specifies indexing for SE's over users, then pages that are unavailable will not be indexed.

When google and other se bots come onto the site they are automatically recognized as bots and are hooked up to the members group. So Googlebot and other SE's doesn't browse like a guest.

Standard setting you can change in IPB.

Download User Agent Switcher for Firefox to see if I really live in a dreamworld... Seems fine here

Originally Posted by Sam Granger When google and other se bots come onto the site they are automatically recognized as bots and are hooked up to the members group. So Googlebot and other SE's doesn't browse like a guest. Standard setting you can change in IPB. Download User Agent Switcher for Firefox to see if I really live in a dreamworld... Seems fine here

Will you not be penalised for cloaking?

Originally Posted by -Gary Will you not be penalised for cloaking?

Highly doubt it. Thousands of forums with this enabled and doing well for years. The content is there, just for logged in people. Isn't like I'm trying to spamdex in which case it would be risky, yes.

It's a legitmiate method, i just wasn't aware it was default in IPB.

That said, you're still going to lose a lot of members through Guest's inability to view topics. I don't know a single person that would bother signing up to a forum that impliments such a policy.

Well, I could try turning it off and see how it goes I guess.