private forum

[David Beaumont]

I asked this before but can't find it.  Is it possible to have a private forum with a hidden link that only we know and which is marked no robots to keep out search spiders?

Thnaks

David

[Will L <Nabble>]

We will have this, but it's not a high priority right now. So, it will take a few months before we get there.

[David Beaumont]

Thanks for that I understand why it is not a priority.  We would be willing to pay something if that helps although it wouldn't be much as we are a not for profit organisation.  The other possibility is to accept your Google ads back, on the archive pages only though please.  

I suspect a lot of small organisations will have this private requirement for their archives.

David

[Will L <Nabble>]

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think it will make much difference. We have a very limited resource so we have to stick to our priorities. 99% of our existing users are public forum/archive users, so we are working on several important features to make them happy. As for private forum users, we had a few requests, and we know we will do them, but it's just timing. We would do them now if we have more programmers, but at the current speed, I think we may get to them in 3 to 4 months - that's the best we can do.

[David Beaumont]

Will, any progress on this?  Thanks

David

Will L <Nabble> wrote:

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think it will make much difference. We have a very limited resource so we have to stick to our priorities. 99% of our existing users are public forum/archive users, so we are working on several important features to make them happy. As for private forum users, we had a few requests, and we know we will do them, but it's just timing. We would do them now if we have more programmers, but at the current speed, I think we may get to them in 3 to 4 months - that's the best we can do.

[Will L <Nabble>]

We have private forum now. You can turn your mailing list archive into a private forum. Also, the forum also works as a mailing list. But these features are all on nabble2. For your archive, we will need to migrate it to Nabble2 first. Let me know if you want to do that. I also see your other post about installed nabble, sorry, that's not done yet. It's on our list but not any time soon.

[David Beaumont]

Thats great thanks Will, we are discussing going private, with differing views on it.

One possible compromise you migth be able to help with - would it be possible, in Nabble 1 or 2, to have the messages public and available to Google but the Nabble Archive search limited to our members?  This would promote us and Nabble on the internet but reserve the poweful and specific archive search  search function to our members.   Currently nearly 20% of new visitors to our website come from people looking at our archives on Nabble and I'd like to keep that figure.  

I hope this is possible already if not sorry to add a new feature request but it may be in Nabble's interest as I presume if everyone forum went totally private this would not be good for Nabble.  I assume we could do it ourselves if we had the installed nabble but would rather have it in Nabble1 or 2.  

Thanks

David