Barmy Website Policy !

Why do some website forums have a policy of having to log in just to view topics?

I understand why they, like TV Forum for instance, insist you log in before actually posting a message, but why register just to view ?

How do you expect to get new traffic if you can't read the messages, to see what they're on about, before registering to post?

Seems barmy to me!

Some offending web sites :

http://talkspace.forumcircle.com/index.php

http://forum.talkforum.org/

http://www.gauntyfansite.co.uk/forum/

(Ok, I admit I want to read the Gaunty insults, but don't see why I should register for the pleasure!)

I don't see the point myself for the reasons you said. I can understand some larger forums might want to block off a few forums until you registered to be considered as an extra for registering, however blocking the whole thing just doesn't make sence. Some argue it's to keep track of who's visiting the site, but analytics software/services do the same thing without putting people off.

One of the worst ones I've seen is Webmasterworld (I think the name is), who have the forum set up to be publicly indexable by Google, but not actually viewable without paying to register if you follow the link. It comes up in an awful lot of search results in web-dev work.

And yes people, if you get one of their links in your search results, make sure to report it to Google too. It's their choice to be subscription only, but sending different content to the engine is in direct violation of the rules of most search engines as it makes searching for desired content difficult.

Most websites and forums are now programmed to let Googlebot among others index the site without registration getting in it's way. It's not a sensible practice however as people can click to see the page from Google's cache, defeating the object of having them register in the first place.