Being a new site, less than 6 months, how bad is it to make one forum topic private?

I get lots of e-mails and so does another member about the news we post from non-registered members, we are both well known in the industry and our e-mails are already out there we most of these people who are e-mailing us have it or know someone that does. We want to turn these lurkers into members but I don’t want to shut out the search engines/spiders. I post at least 2-5 new stories in this section a day and most people who come to that forum topic first, because its news.

What do you guys think?

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I usually recommend against it, unless it is confidential or semi-confidential info. I know that from my pespective as a visitor, I am turned off when I find forums that I cannot read without registering...Granted, you aren't talking about hiding all of your threads, just those in one section. Additionally, you run some pretty unique forums so I doubt these people can just pick their stuff up and find the information elsewhere...

So given your situation, I say it's worth a shot...If you do want to do it, don't worry about keeping search engines out, because there actually is a way around that. You can install a mod that will treat search engines as regular members - without the posting privilege of course. This means that when your forums detect a search engine, even if guests cant read the posts, it will let the search engines. You can get it here. Be sure to test it out first, as it's a new mod.

Also something you might want to look into is the HIDE hack. This is something that will let you type out a normal message and then put [hide] tags around it to hide the rest until you register and login...there are also more options than just that, but that's the basic gist. You can find that here.

The hide hack is pretty extensive...I think your best bet might just be to hide that one section and install the first mod I talked about.

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Thanks Ryan, those are for 3.5, I'm slacking I am still running 3.0. I will do a search on those. Yes it would only include the Industry News section no other forum topics will be affected.

What I am looking for is: I want the non-members to be able to see the threads but not the post. I was messing around in my Admincp, but 3.0 doesn’t have what I need. I think it’s in 3.5

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You want it so that they can see that the threads exist as well as the thread titles but they cant read the threads themselves? I don't know how 3.0 works...but check your Forum Permissions. Set the guest group to Yes for "Can View Forum" and No for "Can View Thread Content" ...at least that's how 3.5 works

(upgrade to 3.5!!!)

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That's exactly what I want to do. Yes it is only available in 3.5.3 not 3.0.12.

re 3.5.3: I would like to upgrade, but I am afraid of what I would lose, I have install some hacks that I believe would disapper. Right?

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Depends on the hacks you have installed...Upgrading is not too bad if you know the proper process. You will lose code modifications - so you'll have to reapply any changes to the php files that you have made. The biggest problem for you would probably be hacks for 3.0 that you have installed which will not work on 3.5....Keeping them isn't the problem, but getting 3.0 hacks to work on 3.5 is. Most popular 3.0 hacks have a "port" to 3.5 which means they have a counterpart which will work on 3.5

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So does this mean upgrading only rewrites the php files? What would I need to do to the templates that I have changed?

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In the past few days, we've taken the step to make our forum content invisible to guests/non-registered members. I run an adult site and some content can be a little on the strong side. Mind you, it's not a porn site, nothing x-rated is permitted, but some members tend to try to walk the line.

I also installed a hack that let's the spider/bots read the forums as if they were visible. Great hack.

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For phpbb there used to be a hack that would log google, yahoo etc in as a 'fake' user so they could read the forums. That might be avaliable for Vb

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Well, I should have clarified...most template edits you make with hacks are done automatically. You will need to reupload those plugins to reapply those changes. Any manual template changes you will need to make again by hand, as well as php (code) changes.

I posted a link to this earlier

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