Who's Online Guests trying to view members areas

[gawler]

Might seem a silly question, but trying to workout how a guest can be trying to view threads/posts in members only areas.

When viewing whos online it will show guest trying to viewing xxxx they cannot access the thread, but how does a guest even know that thread exists.

Did that make sense?

Guests are being seen as trying to access the mods area and members private message.

Not too sure what is happening.

Thanks in advance

John

[Medtech]

the guests are actually search engines picking up on stuff;)

that is a good thing. there is no harm in it either. in your admincp, you can turn on spiders so you can see what engine is crawling what part.

[gawler]

They are actually not spiders, have the feature turned on.

But even if they were the search engines they should not be able to access members only areas, should they?

Have the forums setup so guests can view the general public area, but have sections of the forums which are suppose to be just for registered members.

Just confused.

[Medtech]

they crawl all parts of my forum including vb arcade games that i don't have turned on. if you want to prevent it, you can create a robot file in your root to stop them. there are threads on it here. besides if only members can access certain parts that spiders are picking up on, then peeps searching the web will only see your domain and the key words used for search. peeps would have to register to see any members only parts.

[gawler]

Thanks Medtech appreciate your replies.

Must admit still trying to get my head around this one.

Because on one hand, we know that normal guests to the forums cannot see anything in the members only area.

But, somehow search engines can.

How is that possible.

Sorry if I am missing the obvious.

John

[Dismounted]

You may have installed a modification that does this.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Maybe they are members who simply not have logged in yet. They might open the thread from a subscription notice or such.