Basically, I am looking for either :
- a way to look in the Online List, verify that a logged IP address matches one of our users, and somehow manually send a message to the guest with that IP address that they need to log in;
- automatically put a soft pop-up after x time spent browsing as a guest to ask the person to log in, and perhaps even pop them a reminder if they decline the first time, after y amount of time;
- somehow ask everyone to log in while still showing the content of the topics in the background, darkened or not, but leave the bots which are identified by MyBB anyway alone so that they can see the content without any problem.
It seems a little intrusive to me to be honest, but that was not your question
.
Rather than depending on IP addresses why not give the members a reason to login? Something like members don't see ads would have me logging in right away.
I apologise for the delay in replying; I thought I had succesfully subscribed to this thread ...
Our site has no ads at all because we want to look more professional and clean ... How would it work to display ads only for guests and not for logged in Members though ?
It could be seen as intrusive, hah, but we have a huge guest issue : almost all the time, there can be approximately ten Members logged in and online, while there are at least forty guests browsing the site ... This is really weird since we know from the IP addresses that some of those guests are Members, and it means that they are not posting and increasing activity on the site, meanwhile ...
On the ads - you can download various plugins where you can make ads visible to certain usergroups - I think Pirata Nervo's MyAdvertisements is classed as a very good one. I am unsure if it is free.
On the members browsing: are they actually moving about the site or just looking at say index.php? If that is so then it could be that they have your site in the browser startup but have cookies set to clear on browser close (it is what I do) and are not actually there, they just have the browser open and one of the loaded tabs is your site.
If this is not the case, then think about why they are not logging in (I don't know what your site is about) and give members an incentive to log in whilst keeping the site functional and informative for guests - maybe allow image attachment viewing for guests, but not file downloads, something like that?
I can't recommend against this enough, Kai-V. In the end, lurkers will be lurkers. You can't force people to participate – they will simply leave.
@Leefish: The site is
http://worldbeyblade.org
Right. I see that it is quite a big site but you are maybe seeing a drop in activity and so you want to get members logged in and posting?
Are you seeing a decrease in membership take up? Are you seeing less thread creation or post creation? If that is so, then it is good that you are concerned, but rather than forcing people to login make them want to log in. What are you doing regarding encouraging posting content?
If there is no problem with posting and so on then I would agree with Brad - let them be
