Looking for addon: limited thread view for unregistered

[zackw]

Hi, VB sent me here because someone said there was an addon for this, I did some searching but didn't find it.

Basically I want something similar to other sites where you can read part of the first post, but have to register to read more.

The trick is, I don't want to block bots and search engines. What I've experienced in the past is that I'll be searching Google for something, I see it's what I want so I go in there, only to find I have to register to read it, but at the same time, it was indexed.

Could a user pose as a bot and get in? I suppose, if they want to go to that much work, but for the most part we want to entice guests to join by limiting in this way. Or we want to do something to make it more enticing to join, such as maybe running banner ads between posts or something annoying, I don't know.

The basic idea is we don't want the guests being able to do everything except post, a lot don't want to post, they just mooch info and read. So we need something to entice them.

[BirdOPrey5]

What you describe is actually very dangerous- if someone reports your site to google they will remove you from google completely. It's called "cloaking."

Google says you have to show the same content to googlebot as you show to anyone who clicks on the link from google.

If you ever see a site doing this you should report them. They take this seriously.

That said there is a mod to do what you request-

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=248897

[zackw]

Sorry it took so long to get back, gee how the time flys.

Ya I think I'll skip the mod, not going to risk SEO issues.

Was worth asking tho. Thx