'First click free' implementation?

[Asia_Expat]

I've decided I want to implement first click free on my site, for a number of reasons. I have no clue how I might go about it. I winder if someone with experience might give me some pointers. I have an active forum with content I want to protect (and encourage more sign ups at the same time) and some static html content I also want to protect.

I have full root access (LAMP).

[Pjman]

Wrong forum area. You need "membership software". Per mod rules, I can't give you any exact names. Google it, better yet duck duck go it!

[Robert Charlton]

Pjman... strictly speaking, the Google Search Forum Charter [webmasterworld.com] rules out posting specific search terms, but I'll allow your suggestion in this case. ;)

My guess is that a home rolled solution might be better if you're proficient enough to build one... but that some of the packages might save a lot of time. Also, it appears, knowledge of php would be helpful.

I searched within site:webmasterworld.com using a variant of the title to the current thread as search terms, and I recommend the search as a start to reading on the topic.

Here's a thread that leads to some suggestions Google made when the feature was launched....

Google Clarifies "First Click Free"
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3768842.htm [webmasterworld.com]

They also have some implementation suggestions (i.e cloak for googlebot, show protected content based on the referrer).

Note that cloaking for googlebot isn't something you'd normally expect Google to recommend. See the above thread for more discussion on this.

If anyone does have more detail thoughts on implementation, they would be helpful, as we don't have much detail on this aspect of the topic.

[Asia_Expat]

Thanks. My preference would be a home made deployment of some kind, as I would be able to keep my own bespoke CMS I developed specifically for my own website. However, it does look extremely easy to implement through the CMS sold by the vendors of my forum software... and that's the route I'll probably take i.e. move all my static content over to their CMS.

[ChrisWilson]

I run two, very large forums with this exact model and use the built in features in vBulletin to accomplish it. You will not run into any issues at all so long as you keep the content exactly the same. In other words, what Google see's should be exactly the same as what the users see's even if they were logged in.

I actually limit the views to 5 threads, so the user coming from Google can actually see five threads, all exactly the same as Google see's, until they are asked to register.