Search engines site access

greg posted this at 18:22 — 9th July 2008.

Joined: Nov 2005

I have a forum - PHPBB3 (Sorry TWF ) - which is of an adult nature.

I have edited the reg page to make sure people who click the go button accept that in the terms and conditions is an age limit (18+).

But Guests can view most of the site, where some adult material is, and I want to ensure I do everything I can to stop people just browsing without at least confirming they are 18.
I know people under this age can (and will) just click yes anyway, but I feel I should at least stop their access from being just straight into the naughtiness.

I can make a page where everyone will be redirected on first visit to click "I am 18 years of age or older" (or leave, etc)

My thoughts are using a cookie for this page, in the forum header (I have yet to investigate the code workings) if this 18+ cookie is not set then they are sent to this page, so anyone viewing the forum will have confirmed they are 18+.

But how would I make search engines bypass this page to still index the content?

Also, I know nothing about the various child safety and parental software available, so is ther some way to link into these? Or do they simply find page content from various keywords such as 18+, 18 or older etc?

Cheers

pr0gr4mm3r posted this at 03:40 — 10th July 2008.

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

You can tell who the bots are by the useragent, and you can redirect others by your cookie idea. Try something like this in your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*(age_confirmed).*$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !^.*(google|yahoo|msn).*$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*) /path/to/confirm/page.htm [L]

You may have to check my reg expression, but this should assume that you either have to be a bot (may have to add to the list), or have an active cookie named age_confirmed.

greg posted this at 17:05 — 18th July 2008.

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

Cheer pr0gr4mm3r, will give that a try....