Guest can't view forum

[Palamoon]

Currently, there are 700+ guests and only 20 members. It would look a lot better if those guests would register. (By making it so that guests cannot view the forum) Plus, they would help out the community more, for example, more people would be in technical support.

[ShyguyXPC]

Currently, there are 700+ guests and only 20 members. It would look a lot better if those guests would register. (By making it so that guests cannot view the forum) Plus, they would help out the community more, for example, more people would be in technical support.

then explain how the hell you would expect someone to decide to join & register if they couldn't read what was on it & decide whether it was worth their effort...

It'd be like going into a car dealership & not being able to inspect the car, sit in it or even take it for a test drive, only option is to buy it & deal with it afterwards, if your unhappy with it, to bad...

a lot of people come to this site & others for help, there's thousands that simply just search & look up stuff, never posting, as others may have posted in the past for what they had questions about.

yeah its nice to see more registered members listed & not so many unregistered guests, but that kind of defeats the point of this tech forum, if the general public isn't allowed to view most of the posts...

[Cmptr-Gy-Dv]

Well I think some of that may be a good idea,

I kind of think they should make the imo community
Hidden from guests, some of the topics and posts get
Pretty scary, may make some people think forget this place,

Although I must also say that most people come here
Looking for tech support, so maybe there not looking at
The community forums,

I did not look at the community forum for the first six months anyway,

[ShyguyXPC]

can always set it up so that the community forum doesn't show or have access unless registered, I'm on a half dozen other forums, where similar things are setup, over on one, there's a Babe Forum section, only registered members can see It if I remember right, on my gaming clans site, we have some sections that are only viewable by registered members, etc etc etc, something like that could be done, once their registered they can view all of the forum sections...

[RamonGTP]

I think that's a horrible idea... I wouldn't mind if the community forum was hidden, but even that I see as rather pointless. If the tech forums are hidden, that would be downright counter productive.

[#43 fan]

Not a good idea, considering most of the guests are just looking up one thing.
Having more guests is a good thing, it shows your forum is popular and is answering questions.

[Keymaker]

>>>>>You will need to highlight my post if you are a guest.<<<<<

Well, if that was the case, I defiantly would not have joined. Because I needed to look up an answer which I found not to be here so I created an account and asked.

Can you see how this would be pretty stupid? LOL

Of course you could obscure things too.

.deksa dna tnuocca na detaerc I os ereh eb ot ton dnuof I hcihw rewsna na pu kool ot dedeen I esuaceB .denioj evah ton dluow yltnaifed I ,esac eht saw taht fi ,lleW

?diputs ytterp eb dluow siht woh ees uoy naC

[ShyguyXPC]

white text on white background & even reversed/backwards too LOL, nice

[Dj-Icer]

There are pros and cons here that I see.

I'm not sure, well I think that TechIMO has no problem with the capacity in handling tens of hundreds of registered people in here

Some guests, well, they come and register and they left. For good that is. I think this would waste the bandwidth of some sort. And even space.

The good side is, we will have a lot more registered members If they registered as a member and then left for good the next day, I would suggest their account should be canceled after 2-3 months later.

[Dj-Icer]

Correction, after 3-4 months later (because sometimes, I can't always be in here.. )

[sr71000]

Don't take this wrong Palamoon. New ideas are great to bring up publicly but this one I have to disagree with you. This site is funded solely by the readers of this forum including guests who click ads and the such. That's the only source of income from techimo as far as i know (i could be wrong). As such we want to allow as many people in as possible. As for dj's idea. Why force them to create accounts if they're not going to post and we're just going to have to keep track of how long they've been registered and delete them anyways. No point to it. Just lots of extra work for the database. Also, why should i have to log in to read posts. While i'm at work or on a public computer i may want to check on a post i made...should i really have to log in to see it? What's the point of forcing logins. If anything, it eliminates traffic. I doubt new people with technical questions will be browsing over to the community and if they are finding sound advice here, i also doubt they'll care too much about what craziness they find over in the community. I think our friendly people (ahahahahaha) and helpful attitudes are all we need to keep people coming back. I know I don't look twice at forums that force me to register before I can even look at their pages. Even if they hold the solution I want, I'll look elsewhere. Typically the only forums like that are the ones you have to pay money to register and that's just cus they want more money. the bastards!! lol.

[GroundZero3]

Expert exchange does this bullshit now where you can see the question a user is asking, but to be able to see the response you have to register. That is the dumbest idea ever if im looking for a solution to a problem i just want a fix. Im not looking to get involved with the community.

Any site i see that requires me to login just to see others response get ignored by me. The only reason why they do this is to boost how many members they have.

[RobRich]

I haven't tried it in awhile, but AFAIK, Google Cache can (could?) get around the registration issue at Experts Exchange.

It could be a shocking revelation to some members, but TechIMO is foremost a public community resource for technical support. While we would prefer readers register for free membership, even if just to say "thanks" for finding a technical solution in an existing thread, it would be a considerable disservice to those readers in technical need to move support information behind the guise of mandatory registration to view content.

The majority of incoming traffic for TechIMO is generated via search engines. The traffic drives our advertising model, which in turn hopefully pays our hosting bills. Many older community members already well know TechIMO does good to pay its expenses. TechIMO generates plenty of traffic, but ads only cover so much expense, especially with the hosting costs and logistics required for such a large forum. Scott keeps TechIMO open due to his immense respect for the community and the members supporting his efforts over the years, not because TechIMO generates any appreciable source of income. Instead, we have other operations like PhotoPost and ResellerRatings that are responsible for generating our company's revenue.

Robert Richmond

[sr71000]

And that's why you folks are good people :-D many thank to all of you for inundating me with nerdy information on a daily basis!! woot woot!!

[SoloCamo]

And that's why you folks are good people :-D many thank to all of you for inundating me with nerdy information on a daily basis!! woot woot!!

Ha. Agreed

[yadiel1541]

I don't agree with blocking the forum to the guests, but they could limit the number of posts a guest could see :/
Like 10 per day

[SoloCamo]

I don't agree with blocking the forum to the guests, but they could limit the number of posts a guest could see :/

Counter productive for the site though, and pretty much every one involved.