Show attachement to guests?

Laurentius

Active member
What do you guys have to say about this? Is it a good thing to show attachements to guests or not? What's recommended?

Services like Pinterest won't work if I dont show the attachments.
 
Is your concern only Pinterest or in general? For Pinterest I ended up putting some code in place specifically for them.

EDIT: To clarify my solution was that you still need to be logged in to view the attachments but if you then try to send it to Pinterest then the pin won't fail.
 
I was actually about to ask the same question. I have been thinking about that a little bit lately, cause I recently inserted a full picture into my post, and then came to think that this way of doing it really just nullifies the entire log in to view attachments...

I am thinking I am going to change it to allow guests to view attachments, then only allow image attachments. I don't see the need to upload anything else on my site.
 
I was actually about to ask the same question. I have been thinking about that a little bit lately, cause I recently inserted a full picture into my post, and then came to think that this way of doing it really just nullifies the entire log in to view attachments...

I am thinking I am going to change it to allow guests to view attachments, then only allow image attachments. I don't see the need to upload anything else on my site.

Ok, the only problem I am concerned about is if members upload huge images and it slows everything down.. The positive thing is that google will index the images and you could rank on the image search!

I don't really know what to do or what's best, that's why I would like some other opinions! :)
 
You have to weigh it against your hosting solution. Limit attachment sizes, and set max width and height for images.
 
You have to weigh it against your hosting solution. Limit attachment sizes, and set max width and height for images.

Well I use Cloudflare, which is great, they remove several gbts / month on traffic use for my website. I have a maximum file size limit, maybe I need to set a maximum image dimension too? It affects performance to have large images being resized down to fit the page.

The only good think with having attachments hidden from visitors is that they actually might register to see them!
 
I was thinking about this too lately and was wondering:

1. Is there any negative effects in terms of search engines/google bots of not allowing guests to view images/videos?

2. Does anyone know how to prevent guests from viewing images/videos? I did all of the following, but when I tested as a guest, I was still able to view.
- Edit User Groups ->Unregistered/Unconfirmed ->View Attachments to Posts: Not Set (No)
- User Group Permissions ->Unregistered/Unconfirmed ->View Attachments to Posts: Not Set (No)
- Node Permissions ("Family and Friends") ->Unregistered/Unconfirmed ->View Attachments to Posts:
Revoke

What am I doing wrong? If anyone can help with these 2 questions, would be much appreciated.
 
magnusb said:
I think it is under the attachment settings, in the Options menu.

I did not see anything here to prevent guests from viewing attachments...maybe I'm missing something...can you be a little more specific please?
 
Never mind that, I just looked, and there was nothing there.

I went to Display node tree and on my selected node I selected the permissions for Unregistered / Unconfirmed, and put View attachments to post as never, worked like a charm.

If you want to disable for all nodes, make sure you set your node permissions for guests as inherit for everything, on all nodes, then go to group permissions and set view attachments to not set (no). xF permissions are a bit different than what most other forums do, but once you get used to them, you understand their brilliance.
 
magnusb said:
I went to Display node tree and on my selected node I selected the permissions for Unregistered / Unconfirmed, and put View attachments to post as never, worked like a charm.

This did not work for me. I'm not sure why though... I set the permissions for Unconfirmed/Unregistered users to "never" for both User Group Permissions and Node Permissions. However, I'm still able to view the attachments as a guest. Could anything else be affecting the attachments being viewed by guests??
 
Do you have a link to a thread with attachments?

You have to note that for images, you can still see the thumbnails, and I am not sure how it handles the full image stuff (if you insert the attachment as a full image). It is more about the download, you will still be able to view that there are attachments on the post.
 
I have threads with video's posted as attachments.

Just want to do the same thing Xenforo does...e.g. can't view images or video's without being a member...
 
What do you mean videos? Youtube videos? Those are embedded, and I don't think they have any permissions to them. Attachments only controls what you upload to your site using the upload a file function.
 
Hey, thanks for your patience. Yes i meant videos (youtube). I thought all attachments(images and videos) would have permissions to limit who can view them. I am new to Xenforo so forgive me but, is it entirely impossible to control that feature? Could I request this be done?

Also:
1. Is there any negative effects in terms of search engines/google bots of not allowing guests to view images?
 
Google treats images different, you might get some more traffic through Google image search by having them public, but I don't think disabling guests from viewing them will harm your SEO that much.

Attachments are just like email attachments, they are attached to the post, hosted on your server. This is only related to the upload a file function. The videos embedding and image embedding is bbcode, same as changing font size or color, and these do not have any permissions, unfortunately. You can request it, I am not sure if there already is a request for it to be added in core, and I am not sure if there exists an addon that can do this.
 
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