Making threads private will encourage users to register the forum or not?

[Katherina]

Here I have little confusion regarding my website. I want to know that if I make my website visible to all but forums and its threads and all posts as private so that they are not viewable by the guests until they register themselves to my website then, will it encourage the visitors to register to my forums? Or it will make the visitors to switch on another forum. I am little confused about this. I will appreciate all suggestions from you people.

[Bharat89]

If you really want to increase the number of users of your website then I will say It’s really a bad idea. And if don’t know then I should tell you that it will surely prevent search engines for being able to list the contents of your content of your forum. Because search engines will also not be able to see the content as it will hidden therefore there will be very less chances that your website might get listed in their search results. So the chances that your site will be noticed by users will be very less. You can do one thing that you allow your guests to see some threads but if they want to read more they have to register.

[Roxy_jacob]

I would never recommend you to do this. As of my personal view, if I will go to forum and they will tell me in order to view their contents I must have register myself to that site then I will definitely move to next forum. Yes, there are some private forums but they are for particular user groups and mostly forums are not private. And I will surely not recommend it at least for newer forums. So it is recommended that you should never think of making your forum private if you want to increase number of users.

[Sheenas]

I personally never suggest to make a forums content private for any forum, neither to new nor to old. I want to ask you one thing that if you hide your content from all the new visitors then if anyone visits your site then how he or she will come to know that the content inside your forum is good or not. And they don’t have that much time to register them just to find out that the content is good or not. They have many other options available.

[rashmi_ay]

I definitely agree with all you guys because, as far as I know every user wants to be a part of an active community. If they will not be able to see any content from your forum then there is no point that they will join your forum. As everyone know there is no shortage of good forums and they are available with open content and if they will have potential content, so why will anyone will waste time in registering to see the contents of your form.