I want to let search engines in my forum but no guests!!!

[Pure Dope]

How can I do that? Is a mod available?

[Adrian Schneider]

Very bad idea.

[Pure Dope]

Why? That get me banned from the search engine??? Or wot?

[Kalyse]

Yeah. Cloaking content is bad.

[magnus]

webmasterworld seems to get away with it just fine.. I hate that site.

[nexialys]

<a href="https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=108070" target="_blank">https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=108070</a>

this tool can be your best luck... you give access to specific forums to this thing, and no access to your guests...

[HydraulicJack]

Hi - I'm new to vB and certain terms such as
cloaking, etc.

I'm in the process of migrating my ten years'
worth of educational content to vBulletin and SE's
- esp Google like to index the content - even
giving my latest posts page a PR of 2.

Posting registration is made available only to
people who've purchased my seminars on adult (as
in 18 or over, non-porn) sexuality education.

Forum is readable by all who are 18 or over.

Is vB crawlable by SEs or not - under those
circumstances?

Does it require a special mod or ??? (I'm an adult
sexuality educator, not a programmer, but I do
admin my own forum).

Thanks!

HJ

Age 18+ only (http://www.multiples.com)

[carpefile]

By default in vB, anything guests can view search engines can index. There are hacks that enhance the ability of search engines to index your site, and also hacks to allow search engines but not guests to view.
You'll just have to dig around here a bit.

[HydraulicJack]

Thanks for the clarification.

I'm fine with SE's being able to index all (but no more) than guests can read.

[Brandon Sheley]

you wont be so fine with the search engines ban you and de index your site for cloaking ;)

I highly suggest against this..

and webmasterworld doesn't do this...

[HydraulicJack]

Thanks Loco!

Actually after several months' worth of ruminating, this is what I want, and that's
no cloak!

I need a mod for motivating Guests to purchase my audio
seminar before being able to view full contents of the
vB forum that supports the content introduced in the
seminar.

It's a little bit different application than the
mod posted at
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=131985
...since all an unregistered visitor there needs to do to defeat the restricted
viewer access is to refuse the cookie that the mod is based on... then the
forum is once again (in Ted's words) wide open, unfortunately.

My forum is already configured to allow only people who
purchase the seminar to register (i.e. to join the
Registered User group).

What I'd like to have is a mod that for any Guest,
i.e., any member of the Unregistered / Not-logged-in
Usergroup, they are allowed to view the first N characters of any post (N
being adjusted by forum admin) then post content display
is truncated with ellipsis ... plus an admin-definable
message such as: To get the whole story click here
(link = likewise, admin spec'd) to order Jack's introductory seminar.

I'd like to limit Guest viewing in this way to motivate them to
get access to full content (over a decade's worth of work) in my vB Knowledge Base.
HJ