I've had this hack installed for a couple of days now, and have seen huge gains in guest registrations already.

Keep up the good work Ted

Best,
Scott

I'm very tempted to use this, but what do you guys think? By limiting what guests can view and forcing them to register, do we piss them off and drive them away or does this really increase membership?

I look at some of the really big forums and they wouldn't touch a mod like this with a 10 foot pole. Seems most of the smaller forums are trying this to build a more active community and I'm not sure that's the right course of action. Thoughts?

I'm not doubting you, but besides your word do you have any concrete poof this type of mod actually increases registrations?

Well, think about it from your perspective. I have it set to show a notice after five views. If you have looked at five threads so far, you must be at least mildly interested in the forums.

I have my blocking set at 20. If you have viewed 20 threads at my site...well I think it's easy to say you are a big fan of the forums. I know that by the time I have read 20 threads somewhere I am signed up.

Just sending my appreciation.
There are valid for and against arguments above, each to their own if they like it or lump it.
So far, I am happy with my experience with this hack.

If you need proof, see my attachment. Prior to installing the hack my forum was averaging 3-4 registrations p/day. The last couple of days have averaged around 15.

I supose it also depends if your website offers good content which potential guests desire.

Note, I have set the block-message at 7 page views (excluding some of the sub-forums from the count).

Best,
Scott

Thanks, I appreciate the time you took to show those stats.

Quick question. I just downloaded the latest version (1.0.5) but in the install file it still says:
This article and its associated code was updated on October 7th, 2006
Version: 1.0.3

In the first post it says:
11/20/2006 - Minor update released to fix error with links in some messaging. Updates recommended.

Sorry for taking so long to reply was just busy!
I don understand what you mean by values in the exclude field :s But I have the following addons installed:

Geek Auto-Link 4.5.0

Hide Links From Guests 1.32

Limited Guest Viewing 1.0.5

Link Anonymizer 1.10

Prevent Spam 1.0

Shoutcast Status Forumhome 2.0 (not working at the moment)

vB Importance 1.0.0

Welcome Headers 4.1.3
Zoints SEO 2.2.2

Zoints Thread Tags 1.2.1

Ouch, i was about to install this. But, you mean to tell you you only installed only four bots into your program? So the thousands of other bots, including several major ones missing from your list, wont be able to index my forums?

So far Yahoo, google, msn etc are fine

Tested and working on my forums
They may be some smaller bots not allowed, but they will not be that important as they will only get you like 5 guests a month? as long as the big bots like google and yahoo are acsessing your site you are right.

Just goto "who's Online" and see whats going on and if there is any permission probelms from the bots.

Maybe if this hack is regually updated with a new list of bots than it will be ok.

scottreeve - your are very correct in that i to have got a heap more registrations per day also. Gone up 14 used to be 1-4 average. Really is getting my forum on the go again, thanks to this hack

Also i was under the belief that bots don't accept cookies so surly it wont have any affect on them anyways.

No. As stated in several threads and the original post, the plugin uses cookies. Bots don't use cookies. Thus bots are fine. However, to be extra sure I have added a routine to check for and skip processing for several major bots which represent 90%+ of searching. Other bots should be fine too.

Don't worry about that. The file is updated, I just didn't update part of the install guide.

Thanks! Installed, we'll see how it goes.

If I have version 1.0.3 installed and I upgrade by intalling the new 1.0.5 will it overwrite all my custom phrases that I changed for this mod?

OT, but same question in regards to welcome headers if I overwrite with the new version, will it kill the custom phrases?

Thanks Ted!

It shouldn't but back it up to be sure!

Any chance of extending the plug-in to include photo views in a PhotoPost Gallery that has been integrated with vBulletin?

Great plug-in, by the way.

Cal

I'm not familiar with the photopost system for working with vb but I'll take a look.

Works great! Thanks!

Grtz,
Kris

Works like a charm! We already had about 12 guests join since the it was installed 48 hrs ago. Thanks!

Ok thanks, I just installed and Love it.

But, does this reset after 24hrs?

Meaning that when they hit the block, does it limit them to a total of 10 views or just 10 views for today?

Im hoping it only limits them during a 24hr period. Thus i can set it low to just 5 per day etc..

Thanks works perfectly!

It's views until you clear your cookies, be that every hour, day or never.

Thanks for this Ted S

Installed and working fine. Only wanted to restrict one forum at the moment and it works perfectly well.

One thing though, it does not appear to restrict access via the Archive.
Is this correct ?

Correct. This does not impact the archive what so ever.

In that case spiders will still be able to spider via the archive so no worries there. :cool:

Are there any plans to add the archive to the restriction. ?

I hadn't planned on it but I suppose I could take a look.

Gonna give this a shot ;)

This hack is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you so much! :)

I second the above about also limiting the archive--that would be a handy feature.

Rebecca

yes a good add on to the next update would be to allow "clear cookies" so that if the user comes back in 24 hours they can view the threads again up to the limit you set i.e 10 views.

By the way this works for vb3.54 as well

Well.. what would happen if the guest view your archive or printed version?

Installed .. Thank You!

Hi,

I have 3.6.0 and the register take-over message never shows up.

What should I do to make it work?

Thanks,

Ian

Hi I posted this a while back but I got no reply now I understand your a busy man and I love your work and you probably just missed it :)

The plugins I have installed are:

s25, I can't diagnose conflicts with other plugins as I don't write their code. My suggestion is to disable all hacks then enable welcome headers and another hack one at a time until you find the conflict.

Ok no problem its just earlier in the thread you had asked for a list of my installed plugins but I will do that tonight :)

Hehhe amazing how these things happen,I just re-did it and now it is working :) I dont know why but hey if it works ;)

yeah this hack sucks.

:P

So much so, in fact, that I just nominated it as MOTM. Thanks. :)

Canyou guess when I installed it?

http://www.holdmyfile.com/n_images/u..._img/f0002.gif

Great stats, thanks for sharing those with us!

this mod doesnt work for me?

That depends on what you want it to do for you I suppose.