you can't view a persons signature if your not registered

[gonefishin]

Hi Sean


I just noticed that a person can't view anothers signature unless they're logged in. While I could understand that you want to encourage members to register in order to get "perks", there are some mighty informative signatures that are on display to help newbies that they can't see.

what are your thoughts?

thanks,
dan

 

[mnormington]

registration is free.

 

[gonefishin]

that doesn't help if they leave.


This website (and ThePoolForum) have helped me so much that I try and spread the word about TroubleFreePools as much as I can. I direct alot of newbies here from YahooAnswers...some of them join and others just look. But I would rather give a new visitor more time to look and learn that pool management is something that they could do themselves. I believe that the signatures that many members have are a great tool to give that new member another reason to stay here. Once they stay here...I believe there wouldn't be any reason they wouldn't register.

dan

 

[SeanB]

The reason that change was made, along with many others a few months ago, have to do with helping the site to show up better in search engines.

When search engine bots "crawl" the site, they index the content and also follow links they encounter. When bots crawl the site, obviously, they do so as guests. So, in order to keep the bots searching TFP and not wondering off, many of the features available to registered users are not available to guests.

As mnormington said, it is free to register and logging in is quite simple. Guests are welcome to read as much as they like, but if they want to post or if they are going to use more of the systems resources, such as using the search feature, I think it only fair that they take the time to register.

I think "The Stickies", 30,000+ posts about pool care, and the newsletter archive should be enough information to encourage visitors to stick around.

I suppose, we could possibly miss a few folks by not letting them view the signatures while not logged in, but the potential gains from better search rankings with sites like Google are worth the off-set.

Thanks for recommending TFP and for thinking enough about us to make the suggestion!

 

[gonefishin]

Thanks for the explanation!

dan