fyi- temporarily locking the site to anonymous/unregistered browsing

[Sean]

Hi All,

I'm going to lock the site to anonymous browsing so I can observe how this affects performance. I might do this for an hour or so. Thanks, Sean

[MikeM1977]

Hi All,

I'm going to lock the site to anonymous browsing so I can observe how this affects performance. I might do this for an hour or so. Thanks, Sean

Still locked as of right now. Don't keep it locked because otherwise the APUG userbase will plateau. Nobody wants to register to check out a site for the first time...

[Sean]

Hi Mike,

Yes, I still have anonymous browsing locked for now. Server load has decreased by about 60% since getting these bots blocked, and registrations to the site have literally doubled since locking things from anonymous browsers. Kind of makes me wonder if we should go back to the old way. What I'd like to do is is make most of the site available to anonymous users except the forum, but have the text based search engine forum design (called the archive) open to all. Since the forum archive is all text based the search engines would index it without killing our server and send prospective members on the net to the archive version, if they like what they see they could register for the full version. I'd like to hear more feedback from the community on their views of this. Thanks, Sean

[Loose Gravel]

Sean, what you said, sounds good to me. I'm not offended registering at sites with good data.

[Blighty]

Sean. You do what you need to do! It's no problem to me. Regards, Blights

[pentaxuser]

Sounds good to me. Prospective subscribers need to see what the forum content is like but then make up their minds to subscribe or not. If they want to be active and enjoy the benefits of interaction then they join.

If your car breaks down would you expect to be able to ask a question of about why it has and what to do about it and get answers from a pool of thousands of mechanics for free?

Same should apply here.

pentaxuser

[Sean]

just to clarify, registration will remain free. a free registration gets access to the forums, subscriptions get access to other parts of the site but the forums will remain free. This lockdown is not to make apug subscriber only just to make it registration only..

[clogz]

Is what you are doing at the moment affecting the chatroom?

Hans

[Sean]

Is what you are doing at the moment affecting the chatroom?

Hans

it should not affect it at all. I suspect something might be wrong with the chat service, I'll have a look..