Forum guests limitations

[Namesniper]

Hi,

Can anyone please tell me if there is a way to limit the number of concurement connection from guests on a particular vBulletin based
forum ?

If there is none then if i buy it,maybe i can limit the number of connections with Apache Mod_limitipconn and mod_bandwidth but then will it overload the server ?
I mean if there are too many connections leave with "waiting" status or if i limit teh bandwidth per ip then it will take longer for apache to serve them and probably can overload the RAM or the server too ?

Also whats the default "Currently active members" cut off ?

[Andy Huang]

There is no concurrent limit option, the software can house as many guests/users as your server can handle. There is, however, an option to limit the load averages to a certain value so that you can prevent your server from overloading. When the load average value is hit, users will get a notice from the software automatically indicating that the server is too busy right now, and will be able to provide content again shortly (you can also customize this message).

[feldon23]

Default Currently Active Members is 15 minutes which is how long each user's session is active for. It's very easy to change forumwide.

You have a HUGE amount of control over what guests see. You can hide Member List, certain forums, forum threads (see the forum but not the list of threads_, forum posts (see the forum and threads but can't read them), and many other settings you can disable plus you can write your own custom code that hides entire chunks of HTML based on Usergroup. Lots of power.

Any kind of htaccess/Apache code you find that limits by IP, etc. you can use if your host allows it. vB does not interfere in this regard.

You can require Guests to enter one of those Image Verification (Captcha) things each time they Search, Post, use Contact Us, etc.

[Namesniper]

Ok,but the only problem with setting guests to not see the particular categories is that the search engien bot wont be able to spider it as well right ?

Thats why i was thinking over setting a connection limit.

Are there other options to set to limit the load that guests can place or is there a way to show guests a light skin and will it decrease the load on server ?

[Alteran Ancient]

No, this is not totally true. vBulletin can usually distinguish between Googlebot and a Normal Guest. Correctly set, Google would be able to see everything in the archive version, so everything can be recorded by the bot, where guests would be limited.

[feldon23]

I think you have more to fear from search bots than users as far as bandwidth is concerned.

[Namesniper]

Is it set from admin area or i will need a mod for it ?

[feldon23]

No, this is not totally true. vBulletin can usually distinguish between Googlebot and a Normal Guest. Correctly set, Google would be able to see everything in the archive version, so everything can be recorded by the bot, where guests would be limited.
I am not aware of vBulletin working like this.

To my knowledge the Archive only shows forums that a guest can view.

[Namesniper]

I am confused then..

[feldon23]

As far as I know, search engines like Google can only see what you allow Guests to view. This is in compliance with Google terms and conditions. If you show Google one thing and Guests another, Google has the right to kick you off the search results. That doesn't stop sites from doing it though.

[Andy Huang]

While vBulletin software can identify spiders by default for the administrators viewing Who is OnLine (WOL) page; it does not differentiate the permissions for the spider bots by default. I'm sure there are ways you can hack your installation to provide different content viewing level for guest and spider bots; but that is not going to be supported directly by Jelsoft and must be done via 3rd party code edit/plugin/product at vBulletin.org or other locations.

One thing you may wish to note is that IF you use a 3rd party method, for whatever reason, you are giving search engines more access than your guest, your guest can just as easily see all the contents search engines can see by using the 'cache' option from most popular search engines. And thus rendering the different permission level -- in my opinion -- utterly useless.

[SSSlippy]

You can easily show different content to a user and a google bot. However google will remove your page from their search engine if you show more content to the bot then to the guest users.