Traffic Question

I'm pretty sure my board qualifies as big....almost 12,000 members, over 1.5 million page views a month -- not sure what y'all are considering.

Anyhow, with any big board you have people who hate you, am I right? I suppose it's dependent upon the topic and things of that nature or the amount of whiny brats you attract.

Anyhow, I'm curious as to whether or not any of you can give any advice on how to block incoming traffic from clicks off a certain website. I don't feel the need to drag more strain to my bandwidth (I'm already on the second largest hosting package my hosting service offers and I'd prefer not to take that $30 jump!). I'm wondering if this might save a little bit of bandwidth.

Any help? I need to get it where users can't view my forum unless they register - well, let me take that back - they can only see the MAIN page of the forum - index.php - but can't click into any threads or actual forums. I can't remember how to do that! I haven't worked on my board beyond adding avatars and themes in, GOD knows how long because I haven't had time, and I while hacking comes easily back, the simple stuff confuses the shiznit out of me for some reason, LOL.

[Bhuwan]

just wanted to prove what your saying thanks!

[FlyBoy73]

Forget all the testing or proving. We've tested it, and we've seen 200% plus gains in registration but what does that actually mean? Really, not much, if they are only registering to search or view.

I don't usually go against the grain on things like this but when people pull results in the search engines they kinda-sorta trust what they get, and more than 1/4 of the people who click often register.. But, it is out of frustration, and that does not mean they turn into active members. They do it for a reason and they 'probably' often never come back.

My own personal view mirrors that of others posting in this thread. I would never register if that is what it takes.. That isn't an assumption... That has been my reaction when visiting other forums. I simply won't waste the time unless it is the end-all-be-all of information; and rarely does anyone hold that rank..

For those who might be considering it.... You might get a temporary increase in registered members but that does not automatically equate to a new posting base, and it definitely will kill search engine bots spidering your content.

Just my "thoughts"...

[Erwin]

... including the adsense spider so no content-specific adsense ads.