Leechers

[The Elite]

Simple rant, people are leechers. When I opened my content to guests for free (unlimited access to the content that was for everyone), the forum only received about 3-4 registrations daily. Now that I removed access to the content from guests, we're getting 13-20 registrations. People are leechers, what a shame.

 

[kavin]

Re: Leeches

Yeah! Its true that people are Leechers. But restricting guest viewing will work perfectly on a Forum like yours. But for a small forum, it will drive visitors away. So, its sometime our fate to allow leeching.

 

[The Elite]

Re: Leeches

Yeah! Its true that people are Leechers. But restricting guest viewing will work perfectly on a Forum like yours. But for a small forum, it will drive visitors away. So, its sometime our fate to allow leeching.

Yeah, I completely agree, although I never really aimed to make my forum successful, just a resource for people. Although with its growth, I needed more revenue to maintain the hosting costs, revenue comes from activity, activity comes from new members. I was forced to do this.

 

[kavin]

Re: Leeches

Yeah! Its true that people are Leechers. But restricting guest viewing will work perfectly on a Forum like yours. But for a small forum, it will drive visitors away. So, its sometime our fate to allow leeching.

Yeah, I completely agree, although I never really aimed to make my forum successful, just a resource for people. Although with its growth, I needed more revenue to maintain the hosting costs, revenue comes from activity, activity comes from new members. I was forced to do this.

Yeah! I agree with you. You need new members to keep up costs. Maintaining a big forum is always a painful job.

 

[The Elite]

Re: Leeches

Yeah! Its true that people are Leechers. But restricting guest viewing will work perfectly on a Forum like yours. But for a small forum, it will drive visitors away. So, its sometime our fate to allow leeching.

Yeah, I completely agree, although I never really aimed to make my forum successful, just a resource for people. Although with its growth, I needed more revenue to maintain the hosting costs, revenue comes from activity, activity comes from new members. I was forced to do this.

Yeah! I agree with you. You need new members to keep up costs. Maintaining a big forum is always a painful job.

It definitely is a difficult task.

 

[The Reverend]

i know of some forums that do not allow guests to view Any posts

 

[Gimgak]

Unless you run a warez board or ogrish, no real reason. Just because someone doesn't post doesn't make them a leecher, lurkers are more likely to click ads than members that block them instantly from seeing them so many times.

 

[The Elite]

Unless you run a warez board or ogrish, no real reason. Just because someone doesn't post doesn't make them a leecher, lurkers are more likely to click ads than members that block them instantly from seeing them so many times.

I have no problem with members not posting, I'm talking about guests never registering, therefore they are leechers.

 

[Mik.]

I should really try that. Before my permissions for guests were to Read Only but I'll give them View Only Access.

 

[Fergal]

That seems a little harsh The Elite. Isn't the open sharing of information a lot of what the spirit of the Internet is all about? Those visitors improve your stats and will improve your ad revenue, so they are actually helping your forum. By forcing them to register (I believe that on your forum ads are hidden from members) you will lose ad revenue.

 

[AnAccount]

I should really try that. Before my permissions for guests were to Read Only but I'll give them View Only Access.

What's the difference between Read Only and View Only? I thought they were the same thing.

 

[Medora]

Ashley—

I should really try that. Before my permissions for guests were to Read Only but I'll give them View Only Access.

What's the difference between Read Only and View Only? I thought they were the same thing.

View Only means you can look at the page that lists the topics, while Read Only means you can look at the posts contained inside those topics. In other words, for View Only you can see the viewforum page, but for Read Only you can also see the viewtopic page.

 

[Gimgak]

That seems a little harsh The Elite. Isn't the open sharing of information a lot of what the spirit of the Internet is all about? Those visitors improve your stats and will improve your ad revenue, so they are actually helping your forum. By forcing them to register (I believe that on your forum ads are hidden from members) you will lose ad revenue.

Plus it's a great way to kill all google traffic. The only reason you should lock content out is if you don't want people to find it.

 

[The Elite]

That seems a little harsh The Elite. Isn't the open sharing of information a lot of what the spirit of the Internet is all about? Those visitors improve your stats and will improve your ad revenue, so they are actually helping your forum. By forcing them to register (I believe that on your forum ads are hidden from members) you will lose ad revenue.

Plus it's a great way to kill all google traffic. The only reason you should lock content out is if you don't want people to find it.

Google has access to all my content, therefore it doesn't kill my Google traffic. What happens if content is visible to them:

They click on website.
Read thread.
Leave thread.

But, when I have the content hidden.

They can either:

Click on website.
Leave thread.

Still the same amount of traffic, OR they can register, and I (and themselves) benefit more from it.

 

[AnAccount]

Ashley—

I should really try that. Before my permissions for guests were to Read Only but I'll give them View Only Access.

What's the difference between Read Only and View Only? I thought they were the same thing.

View Only means you can look at the page that lists the topics, while Read Only means you can look at the posts contained inside those topics. In other words, for View Only you can see the viewforum page, but for Read Only you can also see the viewtopic page.

:lol: Now you know why I have a tech administrator? Because I have a heck of a time understanding permissions, especially when you have two that mean similar things. So glad I'm not running this project by myself! Seriously!

 

[Gimgak]

That seems a little harsh The Elite. Isn't the open sharing of information a lot of what the spirit of the Internet is all about? Those visitors improve your stats and will improve your ad revenue, so they are actually helping your forum. By forcing them to register (I believe that on your forum ads are hidden from members) you will lose ad revenue.

Plus it's a great way to kill all google traffic. The only reason you should lock content out is if you don't want people to find it.

Google has access to all my content, therefore it doesn't kill my Google traffic. What happens if content is visible to them:

They click on website.
Read thread.
Leave thread.

But, when I have the content hidden.

They can either:

Click on website.
Leave thread.

Still the same amount of traffic, OR they can register, and I (and themselves) benefit more from it.

Guess that works for you, cloaking is frowned upon by search engines and is considered black hat but if it works it works.