Changed forum settings?

[Capitan]

Have the forum settings been changed so you have to log in to view posts now, or is it a glitch on my end?

From today, if I visit the forum without logging in all I see against each section is "Private" and if I click on any section it states that "There are no posts in this forum".

[KLH]

I am experimenting with the forum settings to see if I can knock off unregistered users and bots. We have a high amount of both.

[Windows 95]

Have the forum settings been changed so you have to log in to view posts now, or is it a glitch on my end?

From today, if I visit the forum without logging in all I see against each section is "Private" and if I click on any section it states that "There are no posts in this forum".

If that's the case, there's going to be a lot of people that won't find this place.

I know I first joined DJF1 after reading so many threads from my Google searches.
I think that's the case though. Because I just Googled "budget mixer" & I Googled "beginner dj". And there were no DJF results on the first page for either search.

[Windows 95]

I am experimenting with the forum settings to see if I can knock off unregistered users and bots. We have a high amount of both.

Is bandwidth usage a problem?

[David Bowman]

Spammers, scammers, trolls and bots are the problem. Besides, since I am a moderator, I had to deal with a number of sore asses who are coming back here to get web addresses of my SC/MC and troll that as well.

I am experimenting with the forum settings to see if I can knock off unregistered users and bots.

Good idea. That would also knock off all the previously banned spambots and other Jameses'

[KLH]

Is bandwidth usage a problem?

Nothing's a problem per se. I've just noticed that we average about 12 people logged in and about 150 non-logged in users. When looking at non-logged in users, I see that they're mostly bots (mostly Yahoo, Google, and Baidu). It'd be nice to knock them or at least lower the number of them. It'd also be useful to get real stats on usage.

We have a TON of content being analyzed by search engines. I'm not worried about not showing up on a search engine at this time.

Again, this is simple experimentation. I'll reset the settings back to their original state momentarily.

[KLH]

I'll reset the settings back to their original state momentarily.

All settings have been returned.

I learned that:

* Bots do not appear to log out. They appear to just go dormant and then wake up when they want to scan things
* There are multiple (meaning many 10s of them) bots per search engine
* Some members read the forum and don't log in (which is why this thread was made)
* Getting rid of the 150+ bots will take stronger measures

[Capitan]

All settings have been returned...

Good to hear