google wat

[Telekinetic]

So I see my forum today, and see a guest browsing. (I have guest access disabled) When I press Who's Online, the guest is viewing my profile, and of other members later. I don't know how this was possible, I looked up the IP and it was Google. Google bypasses permissions and for no reason goes onto my forum  to stalk my members? I banned the IP which is obviously pointless but I was having fun. Any opinions?

[Arantor]

Google was trying to view your forum, kind of what it does. It just follows all the links it finds. Who's Online is not smart enough to tell you "the user requested this page but they got an error message" which is what happened here.

If you don't want to show up in Google, add a robots.txt file to your forum.

[Telekinetic]

Google was trying to view your forum, kind of what it does. It just follows all the links it finds. Who's Online is not smart enough to tell you "the user requested this page but they got an error message" which is what happened here.

If you don't want to show up in Google, add a robots.txt file to your forum.

There couldn't be links I assume but, I check Who's Online, google is viewing my profile, I refresh and it's someone else's profile. Usually when it comes to guests and access is disabled, it says they're viewing index. Not like Im' worrying because what can google possibly have against me but it still kinda bothered me that guest access security was a bit off. I guess it wasn't. Thanks.

[Arantor]

Of course there are links.

If your forum is visible to people not signed in, it's visible to Google. On the right hand side it has the last person who posted in a given board with a link to their profile...

If that was visible to Google at any time, it would have cached it and kept trying to visit it. robots.txt though will tell Google not to come visit.

[Telekinetic]

Of course there are links.

If your forum is visible to people not signed in, it's visible to Google. On the right hand side it has the last person who posted in a given board with a link to their profile...

If that was visible to Google at any time, it would have cached it and kept trying to visit it. robots.txt though will tell Google not to come visit.

Guest access is totally disabled, people who are not signed in are required to sign in all the time. How can that be explained?

[Arantor]

How exactly is it disabled? Did you do it immediately upon installing t he forum?

[Telekinetic]

How exactly is it disabled? Did you do it immediately upon installing t he forum?

Admin > Features and Options > Allow guests to browse the forum - unticked. Shouldn't that be just it?

[Arantor]

That is, I was just checking you hadn't done it by way of other things, e.g. just removing guest access to boards.