[noppid]

One of the pitfalls of this hack that has been pointed out is that the first thing a search engine sees is this...

<!-- ADDINFO BAR PLUGIN -->
<div id="infobar"><a href="http://www.example.com/forums/register.php"><img style="vertical-align:middle;margin:3px 5px;border:none;float:left;" src="http://www.example.com/forums/images/misc/warning.gif" alt="" /><span>Welcome to <strong>Greatest Forum</strong> - please click here to register. If you are already a member, please log in.</span></a></div>
<!-- END ADDINFO BAR PLUGIN -->

And as a result, many times when you see a site with a welcome message indexed in the search engines with a listing like...

The Greatest Forum
Welcome to Greatest Forum - please click here to register. If you are already a member, please log in.

Not very informative.

So anyway, here's a suggestion.

in the CSS file find:

/* A fake IE information bar */
#infobar {
	font: message-box;
}

Change to:

/* A fake IE information bar */
#infobar {
	font: message-box;
	position:fixed;
	left:0px;
	top:0px;
}

If you have this mod installed, remove the header edit and install this in the footer instead. This goes at the end of the footer template.

<if condition="($show['guest']) AND (THIS_SCRIPT != 'register') AND (THIS_SCRIPT != 'login')">
<div id="infobar"><a href="http://www.example.com/forums/register.php?referrerid=1"><p>It appears you have not yet registered with our community. To register please click here...</p></a><embed src="infobar.wav" autostart="true" loop="0" hidden="true"></embed></div>
</if>

Now the first thing a guest sees is still your welcome message. But the SEs parse the code and the message is the last thing they see before the closing body tag. You'll also notice that the infobar stays at the top even when the member scrolls.

Of course your mileage may vary with the CSS positioning settings thus requiring you to make some adjustments. This can cover stuff up depending on your style. But this is tested on IE and FF and appears to work on a validated XHTML page.