Lack of interest Links in private forums

[Spenser]

Hi!

I would really appreciate to hide links in private/hidden forums from appearing in the referer.
In some circumstances it would be better if the link target doesn't get to know from where the visitor was coming.
Links in public areas don't bother, they can be viewed anyway. But links in hidden areas should stay hidden.

 

[Ryan Kent]

Why do you feel that the follow/nofollow tag has any affect on how the spider passes referrer header information?

 

[Mike]

The follow/nofollow thing is really unrelated to the issue at hand, as is the whole spider thing as well. We're talking about a private forum, so a spider won't be able to access the thread anyway. If the thread is public, then there isn't really a privacy issue about sending a referrer header.

 

[Spenser]

If the thread is public, then there isn't really a privacy issue about sending a referrer header.

That is absolutely correct.
This is why a global de-referrer isn't the best idea.

 

[Spenser]

Why do you feel that the follow/nofollow tag has any affect on how the spider passes referrer header information?

If a spider obeys to the nofollow tag, there is no problem at all. If not, it is relevant for privacy if it makes use of referrer headers or not.
Everything is software. It's up to the programmer what a spider (or any program) does.

 

[Ryan Kent]

If a spider obeys to the nofollow tag, there is no problem at all. If not, it is relevant for privacy if it makes use of referrer headers or not.
Everything is software. It's up to the programmer what a spider (or any program) does.

This is my final reply. I can't explain it any clearer, and you clearly are unable or unwilling to understand that "nofollow", despite the verbiage, has NOTHING to do with whether a link is actually followed or not. ALL viewed links are followed to the next site by all major search engines.

That is not correct.

All major search engines follow the link regardless of the "follow/nofollow" tag. The difference between search engines is whether they provide page ranking value to the linked page.

 

[Forsaken]

This is my final reply. I can't explain it any clearer, and you clearly are unable or unwilling to understand that "nofollow", despite the verbiage, has NOTHING to do with whether a link is actually followed or not. ALL viewed links are followed to the next site by all major search engines.

This suggestion never had anything to do with the nofollow attribute of links.

 

[Ingenious]

I've had a look at my vB forum and sure enough, outgoing links in a private forum are different than ones in public forums.

Can we get back to the point in hand? This whole thread has become hopelessly negative - you should all be treating feature suggestions positively and embracing them - if you don't agree with a suggested feature then don't post

 

[BrandonKS]

This is a good suggestion, I would like this as a standard option in private forums.
There is no reason to allow the sites we're linking to, to know who we are
Here is an example of what the OP is talking about http://nullrefer.com

 

[Spenser]

Here is an example of what the OP is talking about http://nullrefer.com

Something like that is what I wish, added to links in private forums.

This suggestion never had anything to do with the nofollow attribute of links.

That is absolutely right.

This is my final reply. I can't explain it any clearer, and you clearly are unable or unwilling to understand that "nofollow", despite the verbiage, has NOTHING to do with whether a link is actually followed or not. ALL viewed links are followed to the next site by all major search engines.

Excuse me, but it seems like I was unable to explain to you that actually I don't care about "nofollow". It's not the topic. It could become part of the topic dependend on what happens after the link is followed. That is all I want to add.
The "nofollow" thing was just an additional remark of Brogan.
So calm down.

I've had a look at my vB forum and sure enough, outgoing links in a private forum are different than ones in public forums.
This whole thread has become hopelessly negative.

That is, what I wanted to suggest. Keeping linking in private forums private.
And I don't think the thread has become negative. It just went a little off-topic.

 

[ARealRiley]

I've had a look at my vB forum and sure enough, outgoing links in a private forum are different than ones in public forums.

Side note, I'm fairly sure this behavior is due to vBSEO.

 

[Robbo]

Couldn't you just make it so it POST requests the link to a url on your forum (xenforo.com/defferer?) and then it uses the POST data to build a link and you just redirect from there with a header location call?

 

[Ingenious]

Side note, I'm fairly sure this behavior is due to vBSEO.

Good point - I do have vBSEO installed.

 

[Spenser]

Couldn't you just make it so it POST requests the link to a url on your forum (xenforo.com/defferer?) and then it uses the POST data to build a link and you just redirect from there with a header location call?

There are many ways to do it if the developers decide to do it at all...

 

[Robbo]

Well what is the method vBulletin uses? I could just make the mod for you...

 

[Spenser]

Well what is the method vBulletin uses? I could just make the mod for you...

vBulletin offers a local de-referrer, something like "http://myforum.com/dereferrer/www.target.com" (don't know it exactly as I don't have it here, but it's a local thing).

 

[Robbo]

vBulletin offers a local de-referrer, something like "http://myforum.com/dereferrer/www.target.com" (don't know it exactly as I don't have it here, but it's a local thing).

That seems very simple to make... if no one else shows interest I'll get to making it for you.

 

[Spenser]

If there is a conditional that checks whether a post is going to be displayed in a private forum this should make some additional lines of code in the parsing function, I guess.

 

[Robbo]

Would have to modify XenForo_Link or the bbcode parser in some way. I don't think changing XenForo_Link is easy without doing some nice hacky php buffering and extending it that way but it could probably be of use to you simply by adding a new bbcode tag where the user can dereffer (is that a word?) it or something?

Keep discussing and I might find some time to do something

 

[Spenser]

The use of BBcode is optional. That means, it depends on the user if a link source keeps private or not. I don't think this is satisfying.

 

[Robbo]

Yeah thought you would say that. I could probably just extend the bbcode.. I dunno, I haven't looked at that side of things yet.