With vBulletin, forum guests are able to view endless amounts of content without being directly asked or forced to register no matter how many times they come back. The purpose of the Limited Guest Viewing System is to drive in registrations by limiting the number of threads guests are able to view without interruption.
This plugin offers two options which can be used to drive in more registrations. The first option allows you to show a reminder message or advertisement after a guest has viewed a certain number of threads. The second option puts up a roadblock stopping guests from viewing threads altogether after reaching a certain number of views. Both options work together to encourage and ultimately force anonymous visitors to either register or login but can also be used separately based on your individual needs.
Because this plugin uses cookies, few if any bots will be impacted when it comes to spidering your site.
Modifications/ Instructions:
Template edits: 1
Plugins: 1 (adds 1 template and several settings)
This template hack should take under 5 minutes to implement and customize.
Customizing the content / messages
To customize which messages appear or what they say, go to vBulletin options, select the ?Limited Guest Viewing System? group and configure the options as desired. Each phase can be modified by adding translation text.
Through the ACP you can enable or disable each option, specify the number of threads that can be viewed before the option is enabled and input any forums you wish to exclude from being blocked.
About spiders/bots
This plugin works by setting a cookie to track the number of visits from a particular user. As bots do not tend to accept cookies, they should not be blocked. To further insure there is no spider accessibility issues, there script identifies major bots (google, yahoo, msn, aol) and explicitly lets them through -- you can easily add to this list by editing the plugin code should you so desire, however, unless a bot starts taking cookies this should not be necessary.
Welcome headers compatibility
The Limited Guest Viewing is designed to work with the Welcome Headers system without any conflict. To insure that welcome header messages do not show up at the same time as the limited guest viewing message, please be sure you are running welcome headers version 4.1.3 or greater (released 11/19).
Updates
5/9/2008 - Released update to prevent installs on 3.7 boards.
2/18/2007 - Minor update to fix register link. Updates optional.
11/20/2006 - Minor update released to fix error with links in some messaging. Updates recommended.
I'm not sure how you're coming to this conclusion. Google does not use cookies and therefore it can't get blocked by this hack which is cookie based. Even if Google did use cookies the hack specifically excludes it (as well as yahoo, msn and a few others) from being impacted. Search rankings and indexing is dependant on a lot of factors, are you certain this is the only one on your site, outbound links, inbound links, content and so forth that has changed?
That said; if you don't think this addon is doing what you want it to do, please don't use it. My expertise is in helping communities become more marketable and to that end, I've released a few free addons to help sites out but not everything I make is ideal for every site.
Which lists the sites links on google. We had 11,000 before we installed it now its down to 9000. I am not complaining btw just pointing out that it may have an effect. I like the hack a lot ty for it. Since i disabled it last week we are back up to 10,100 so something must not be working 100%. I love this hack but if we don't let you know the problems you can never improve it.
Which lists the sites links on google. We had 11,000 before we installed it now its down to 9000. I am not complaining btw just pointing out that it may have an effect. I like the hack a lot ty for it. Since i disabled it last week we are back up to 10,100 so something must not be working 100%. I love this hack but if we don't let you know the problems you can never improve it.
If you feel it's impacting your SEO you should keep it off permanently -- Google is not always forgiving once it removes pages.
I've installed this but i'm sure it isn't working. I've turned it on and have set the limits to 5 for the message 10 for the block. And it seems guests are still wondering around more thn 5 pages to me.
Which lists the sites links on google. We had 11,000 before we installed it now its down to 9000. I am not complaining btw just pointing out that it may have an effect. I like the hack a lot ty for it. Since i disabled it last week we are back up to 10,100 so something must not be working 100%. I love this hack but if we don't let you know the problems you can never improve it.
I'm assuming you have vbseo installed. If you check vbseo's forum, you'll find that fluctuations in pages indexed is pretty normal, I don't think this is caused by this hack
Limited Guest Viewing -- Improve community registration rates Details »»
About Developer
Uses Plugins 
No support by the author.
03-19-2007, 09:24 AM
