When the site was first built we had a lot of it open to the public for google and yahoo bots to be able to crawl the site and put us into the search engines. We recently decided it was time to lock down more of the site to the public but still allow a little bit visible for the bots to pick up.

All the techniques and shop stuff areas are now locked. As a guest you can only see the thread titles but not the content of the threads. What does this mean for the site? Well you can feel better about sharing real info with other working professional tattoo artists without running the risk of a kitchen magician taking your suggestions out of context or treating this forum as an online apprenticeship. The thread titles are still visible so that Google doesn't see the site as a black hole with no info and can still help us attract new members.

The Off topic/job/classifieds areas are completely invisible to guests for security reasons.

The only area that is readable by guests currently is the product reviews and info. This is open because the majority of searches for Rotary machines are based on brand. We have a handful of amazing builders that are members of the forum and have been very helpful. Having info on here about their products with all of you singing their praises is good for them! It attracts users through search engine hits as well as it will help people make informed choices about where their money goes even if they decide not to join the forum.

I you want to see what a guest sees simply log out and look at the forum. If you are not logged in you should see a big gray box at the top telling you to sign up if you are a working professional. If you try to open threads in most of the forum you will get a message saying you are not allowed to see this. When you are done feeling frustrated with not being able to read log back in and start some new conversations, post some work for members to discuss, etc.

If anyone has any opinions to the contrary please feel free to post them here so we can discuss this.