X amount of thread views before guest are forced to sign up

I think it would be great if there was a hack that forced guests to sign up after a predetermined amount of visits to a forum. The number would be assigned by the admin. For example; Let's say you set it to 15 visits, then around the tenth visit a message would start to pop up telling the guest:

Hello, you are currently visiting this forum as a guest. You are allowed 15 visits as a guest before you must sign up and become a member with full member privileges. Signing up is free, so why not do it now? Click HERE to become a new member. You will only be allowed to visit 9 more times as a guest before you will have to sign up. Do it now and get rid of this message. Blah blah blah... Thank you.

Search spiders would be exempt. The number of guest visitis, and the popup message would be admin alterable via the ACP. If a guest used up all of their 'free passes' then they would only see the popup message, not the forum, until they sign up. There's nothing wrong with 'lurkers' on a forum, but they should at least be real members. If they don't want to post that's fine. This hack would take care of everything



.

[bairy]

That would really really really pee me off if I was visiting a site.
I think if you enforce such a thing then you'll either drive people off or you'll have a lot of (grudgingly made) dead registrations which seems a bit pointless.
I know it only takes a second to register and all that, but if you had to register at every website you've ever visited wouldn't you get upset?

[/opinion]


I don't think there is a foolproof way this could be implemented. You could use a cookie which could be deleted or a table with IPs which is useless against rotating IPs. I'd probably go with the cookie.

I think the things to think about with a hack like this would be:
(I'm working on the assumption visit means actual visits, not pageloads.)
Is visitor a search bot? (is the bot list stored in the cache or is it pulled from the xml file every load?)
- If yes, do nothing
- If no:
- - Store the visit number and last visit time in a cookie
- - On visit, has the visit number exceeded the allowed limit?
- - - If yes, redirect to message.
- - - If no, does the last visit time exceed the cookie timeout?
- - - - If yes, increment the visit count.
- - - - If no, do nothing.

If you meant pageloads then always increment the count.

Originally Posted by bairy

you'll either drive people off

Good! Less server load from the leachers of your site. Admins don't pay for bandwidth because their rich, the bottom line is that they pay for it for their members. The less strain on the server, the better for the members who are actually trying to use the site. Every relationship is a two way street. If after a grace period the free loaders won't show a little respect for the site by signing up, then why should any admin care about them? It's not like you're asking them for money or anything, you're just asking that they simply take a quick minute and become registered. They can 'do as they please' after that ;)

or you'll have a lot of (grudgingly made) dead registrations

Doesn't matter. They weren't planing on posting or participating anyway. At least they can show a little respect for all of the admins hard work by becoming a member, instead of just being a parasitic free loader.

I know it only takes a second to register and all that, but if you had to register at every website you've ever visited wouldn't you get upset?

But that's the whole point of this hack, it gives visitors a fair chance to see what each forum is all about BEFORE they are asked to register. I would think that after twenty or thirty visits or so, a person would have a good idea on if that forum was one that they liked or not.

If it's not then no harm done, as they wouldn't have to register. But if it IS a forum that they plan to visit a lot, then they need to stop being a leacher of the sites resources and give a little something back - in this case one minute of their time. I think that's only fair on both parts.

[Idan]

would be hard to implant as not all users have static ip.
so i could have visited your forum 14 times, and reboot my pc, and on my 15th time i'm having another ip showing me this is my first visit.

the best thing i can offer you as an idea which is much easier to implant is this:
just allow anyone to register but the new registered users will be in "Trial members" group, and that group will have some permissions restrictions. then for any user that "collects" to himself x amount of visits (15 for your request) just auto move them from "trial" to "normal member status".

what do you think ?

Why couldn't the board automatically put a cookie on their computer as soon as they visit the site? Then you wouldn't have to worry about the IP address. Even if a cookie couldn't be used I don't see why showthread.php and sessions.php couldn't be altered to control the way guests are viewed. For example; Adding this code (or something like it) could be added to showthread to popup a nag screen every 3 page views.

You must first be a registered member to view any code.

After a while, even if they log in/out, that would get old to them after a while and they should register. I mean if someone knows that the nag screen is going to constantly be in their face until they register, why wouldn't they register? It comes down to the point of least resistance, and in this case it would be easier for them to take a quick minute and register, than to get around the nag screen. Also there should be a way to allow guests to view the board but NOT threads. That might be a good compromise. Membership has its privileges. ;)

[xyz]

It doesn't matter if your guest or not, vB always sets a cookie if it can set one. So I think anything related to bandwidth monitoring can easily be added or accessed from the cookie or the session table relating to the cookie. It's really simple to add the control if a cookie can be set. But if the visitor does not even allow a browser based session cookie then you will be out of luck!

xyz

Originally Posted by xyz

vB always sets a cookie if it can set one. So I think anything related to bandwidth monitoring can easily be added or accessed from the cookie or the session table relating to the cookie.

This is good news

Working on a new hack that approaches this from another angle. Guests and those not registered/logged-in would only be able to see the initial post in a thread, but not any of the replies to the original posters question.

My hope is that if someone is Googling to find the answer to a certain question, and they find a similar post made on your forum, that they would have to register on your forum before they could learn what the answer is - instead of just poaching your forum. There may be ways to get around this but most people wouldn't be that tech-savvy and it would be much easier for them to instead simply register on your forum ;)

HERE's a link to the hack

[rofovnifo]

Hi all! Looks good! Very useful, good stuff. Good resources here. Thanks much! Bye