XF 2.2 Forum forbidden to guests

[Deleted member 184953]

Can the content of forums forbidden to guests (cannot see the discussions) be referenced by search engines?
Thanks !

 

[jeb35]

If content is hidden to guests, how can it be indexed to the web? It can't.

 

[Deleted member 184953]

Yes it's a dumb question. Thanks.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes it's a dumb question. Thanks.

I don’t think it is dumb because I’m sure there could be ways to do it. I think on Wordpress there are plugins that can restrict pages or even parts of pages to certain users but have a setting to allow Google. No idea how and probably against Google guidelines.

 

[whynot]

there are plugins that can restrict pages or even parts of pages to certain users but have a setting to allow Google. No idea how and probably against Google guidelines.

As a registered user Google can access them.
Yes, it's against Google's guidelines.

 

[nocte]

restrict pages or even parts of pages to certain users but have a setting to allow Google

That is called cloaking:

Cloaking - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page