Simple Machines Community Forum

SMF Support => SMF 2.0.x Support => Topic started by: NewMoon on September 20, 2014, 08:43:14 PM

Title: Google crawled boards/posts requiring a login!!!
Post by: NewMoon on September 20, 2014, 08:43:14 PM
I just discovered that boards on our forum that require a login were crawled and are displaying in Google without requiring a login!!!

What could cause this?  I had to take the entire site down until I figure this out as I cannot have private posts out for anyone to see.

Any advice is appreciated!  Thank you!
Title: Re: Google crawled boards/posts requiring a login!!!
Post by: Kindred on September 20, 2014, 09:08:49 PM
1- smf version
2- mods installed
3- url for us to take a look at....


This is not possible, if the forum is correctly configured...   which means that either you have misconfigured something, which allowed google to crawl the boards or you have a mod which broke the standard permissions and allowed it.
Title: Re: Google crawled boards/posts requiring a login!!!
Post by: NewMoon on December 31, 2014, 08:31:41 PM
Sorry for not replying sooner.  You pointed me in the right direction.  The issue was due to an admin error.  One of the new sub-boards was accidentally set as accessible by "guests".  This gave search engines the access to crawl the posts.  We corrected permission settings and cleaned Google.

Thanks!