Restriction on non-registered guests

[TheBostonian]

I can't find the thread where this recently came up, but I have something I nonetheless want to say. I know some complain that they need to be signed on even to read posts. Although I seem to be able to read the forums without signing in, I've heard two or three people complain that they can't. One of these was a person who reasonably objected to linking a Wikipedia article to an UP forum because of this. If it is the case that there is any such restriction, I highly recommend it be removed as an unreasonable impediment to wider access to UP.

[Viper]

Unregistered users are blocked from viewing 3 boards it would seem.

Introduce Yourself

The Coffee House

UrbanPlanet Information

All 3 within the Urban Journal category but Sports is still viewable.

[Spartan]

Is it really that much trouble to sign in?

[ironchapman]

Unregistered users are blocked from viewing 3 boards it would seem.

Introduce Yourself

The Coffee House

UrbanPlanet Information

All 3 within the Urban Journal category but Sports is still viewable.

A couple of city-specfic forums are unavailiable, too:

Detroit's the only one I can think of right now.

I just click the "remember me" option so I rarely ever have to log in.

[dnast]

Yeah, I found it weird that the Detroit forum was unreadable by guests. It's easy to sign in, but if I've never been to a site it's not likely I'll register just to read posts in an essentially public forum.

[monsoon]

Most likely we will expand more of the site to require login before one can read the topics. It costs money to run this site, and limiting access to the topics to those who actually register and logon will allow us to provide more services to those who are interested in UrbanPlanet.

[dnast]

From a web developer standpoint, I strongly recommend against that. You guys do amazing on Google - I always see a link to UP when looking up things remotely related to the site. Once non-members are blocked out of reading the forums, Google and other search engines will start removing pages from their search indexes since they can't access any content, either.

But I'm not the one paying the bills and it's nice to see the site focused on supporting existing members instead of always doing things only to attract outsiders (which many websites do).

[monsoon]

Google spiders and other search engines are unaffected by these changes. They enter the site with member status.

[Urban_Legend]

It's not that hard to register. It's not like we're a pay site or anything.

I think it's cool, how we're on Google. I searched for a new tower in West Palm Beach and ended up finding a link to a thread I had posted like a year ago, lol.

[dnast]

Google spiders and other search engines are unaffected by these changes. They enter the site with member status.

Oh cool. I was just thinking that you could simply make the script recognize a web bot.

I see you guys are on top of things

[monsoon]

For now, I've released the Detroit forum so that guests can read it. Let's see if it makes any difference.

[hood]

I found this site in a search and if I wouldn't of been able to read though some of it first I would of never bothered to sign up.

[Neo]

I found this site in a search and if I wouldn't of been able to read though some of it first I would of never bothered to sign up.

Read access restrictions do not apply to search engines.