Can I hide the forum?

[wedgey]

Can vBulletin be configured, either within the vBulletin software or the server, to be hidden from search engines and other "prying eyes".

The installation I have in mind is a Intranet site that MUST be secure and private. Can vBulletin handle this specification, how would one do this?

Thank You.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

You can either set the permissions of the Guest / Unregistered Users usergroup to not be able to view the forum, or you could work with a .htaccess file or a robots.txt, depending on what you exactly want.

[wedgey]

You can either set the permissions of the Guest / Unregistered Users usergroup to not be able to view the forum, or you could work with a .htaccess file or a robots.txt, depending on what you exactly want.

I want the forum to be "invisible" on the net, so I wouldn't want a search engine to even "see" a forum that has permission required to view the content.

I'm sure I'll use both methods, hide content using access masks and then use ROBOTS FOLLOW = NO in the .htaccess file.

What other techniques can I use to hide a vBulletin install on the web?

Thanks for your reply

[who is chris c]

if you make it so they get this page cannot be displayed (setting guest to no permissions ) they wont even spider it or try to and it wont show up in the engine