stopping bots

hi, I have done a search on this subject & could'nt find a satisfactory answer so I apologise if it has allready been discused

I have had a google bot trawling my forum all day, as a lot of the info on my forum is personal to certain members i am a bit worried about what this thing can spread around the net

so is there any way I can get rid of it???????

thanks in advance

this bot means nothing don't worry

This has already been discussed on several topics Here
Here and Here
And everything is all right so no need to worry, but there is nothing you can do to stop those bots. They come and go whenever they want. I saw bots on the support forum as well so there is no need to worry.

sorry peeps,..............thanks for the info

No problem, and you're welcome!

I do not know how, but yes bots can be stopped by adding some scripts. Will have to google it to find information.

The free forums at http://phpbb.net/ has this feature where you can stop up to 50 kinds of bot from indexing your forums.

Then again, if they don't ndex your forum, you won't be able tofind your forum through their serch engins

there are some meta tags for stopping bots, if they really concern you.

read this: http://www.tamingthebeast.net/articles/robotswhoread.htm

Caihlem wrote:Then again, if they don't ndex your forum, you won't be able tofind your forum through their serch engins

Yes I know that, that was what my post was all about, stopping bots as in preventing the forums getting indexed.

Thanks for the info about bots that have been posted in several threads lately. Like many, I saw bots 3 times on my site in one day, and it raised questions.

My remaining question about the bots is-- are they indexing every part of our forums-- including admin-only parts of the forums that are only accessible to admins and mods? If your forum is set to password-only access, does the bot scan and access the whole thing anyway?

I have read a little bit about bots and on the whole they are good because they increase search engine hits for your site-- but they are bad, too, if they index things that you don't want out there for public viewing. If anyone has info about what areas on the forums these bots can access-- including forums that are set to read only by users logged in with passwords, or special threads just for mods and admins-- I'd appreciate hearing more. And if the bots do get to these areas, I'd appreciate a little more info on how to incorporate a script to keep the bots from indexing certain pages within the forum, if that is possible. Thanks in advance.

The bots cannot access forums that are set to members read and reply only. They get the log in page same as a guest would as effectively that is what they are. Forumotion also disallowes them from getting into member profiles, memberlist, faq etc. The only things they are able to index are the main view of your site as a guest would see it and anything guests are allowed to see set by you, that forumotion havent themselves blocked.

Thank you, zinex.