Load and Guest access

[Tony Reid]

What do you guys think of  temporarily disabling guest access when the amount of people on line reaches a certain limit? like say 80 members on line and 100 guests?

Basically preserving the load of the site for members? and any that are harvesters or spiders will be pointed to a splash screen asking them to log in - or come back later?

[A.M.A]

Would be nice for heavy-traffic forums.

[Ben_S]

Sounds like a nice idea to me, my only issue with it is that it will make them register and surely loading their profile data, read topics list etc where required is going to add to the load, ie a member requires more resources than a guest.

[Tony Reid]

I understand what your saying, but Im primarily thinking of this technique stopping email harvesters.

I have experimented a little and disabled guest accesss when I have had over 100 guests viewing the site and the speed increases quite well. We have a couple of extra registrations, but nothing  outrageous.

I realise that this could also have an affect on legitimate spiders - but if they are draging the server load up then perhaps a temporary guest disable is a good thing?

[[Unknown]]

Might mention this to Anguz... let him decide if its a good idea for a mod...

* [Unknown] whistles.

-[Unknown]

[boogiedown]

i agree this would be a nice mod.

[Ryan]

Me too.. i have a decent server but even when my forum is at its bussiest it cant handles guestsas well so i have to switch it on and off..
It would be realy good for this mod to be made becuase this will help all big fourms!

[paladin]

it seems to be a good feature to prevent server down.