Question About Guest Access

[Illori]

the time it will take you to remove a few hundred/thousand posts that might get made in the time you are away.

[Uhura!]

illori (& others), take a look at this-->

As per what you already said, spam can cause a good bit of damage to your site, if its not looked after properly it can affect your site ranking and site reliability with search engines.

Is this true if the comments never make it past moderation?

[Illori]

if they dont make it past no it can not harm, but you can have issues with your bandwidth usage

[ziycon]

I still think your best bet is post based permissions as it will allow you control spam users and posts can be moderated but for genuine members they wont mind with their first 5(or whatever number you setup) posts being mod'ed.

[chrisallenmobis]

Thanks for sharing your analysis and opinions regarding allowing the guests to comment on forums. This could be really helpful. Thanks for all of this.

[Uhura!]

I am reporting back.

This is working out VERY well.

We're trying it in a few of the public rooms. So far there have been a few guest posters.

We have the mods approve the guest posts - everyone chips in & it isn't overly burdensome.

[Uhura!]

Update:

This is working for us VERY well.

The other consideration is - in my niche people are used to guest posting on blogs...so we have to use this to stay competitive.

There have been a few spammers, but this doesn't negate the benefit of allowing guest posting. We also have also developed a really good method of converting Guests to Members...

[LaurensPlace]

Non of the big forums today allow guest posting, I'm sure they have tried it in the past and decided to not allow guest posting, and with so many forums today using adsense and other alternatives, it would be costly to get spam links all over your board

[ApplianceJunk]

Could you make your spam banner a little larger?

[LaurensPlace]

Could you make your spam banner a little larger?

Seriously, can you post this same thing to every post I make?

[ApplianceJunk]

Sure, NP

[Arantor]

What he's getting at - and it's a fair comment, is that your signature is huge...

[Kindred]

the sig is even larger with respect to the fact that you, so far, have only made single (maybe one or two double) line posts...

[Jade Elizabeth]

I'm surprised at all the hate floating around over this issue ha ha. If you have CAPTCHA and good security questions then there should be minimal spam. If you have issues, require 2 anti spam questions. If still, get a different mod that replaces CAPTCHA.


I have guest posting in specific areas on BunnyRabbitSex.com, and on Awesome Crazy I used to have it enabled in the guestbook...both increase member activity because they all reply a few times...but the downside is that guests arent members....and usually they post once, and bugger off...but wouldnt you rather that than a 1 post account?

Guest posts CAN actually encourage membership though - because it gives them a chance to try the forum before they commit...and if your member base is good and replies you might find it happening often . Because of this I have left it enabled. All my guest posts are moderated and I have yet to see one spam post.

On Awesome Crazy we have a guest we call the "Mystery Guest" who continued to post over a long period on the forum refusing to tell us his/her name. It's a legend now, and that guest has probably caused us to have 500 posts just about him, if not more....but most guests don't do that, we struck gold. I would pay to see them again because they were so awesome ha ha.

[Uhura!]

Non of the big forums today allow guest posting, I'm sure they have tried it in the past and decided to not allow guest posting,

You're sure - so it must be true LOL!

and with so many forums today using adsense and other alternatives, it would be costly to get spam links all over your board

Not an issue for Our Mom Spot.