Hi

I know that some of this forums members have some experience running forums.

I am planing to install a (sub)forum for guests at my board.
So everybody can post at this subforum without registering before.
In this subforum should the guest get all the rights that are reasonable/not to dangerous.

So far I didn't make up my mind being a little bit afraid of this action.
And I have several questions.
- Which rights should the guest receive
- Which are to dangerous
- Which rights shouldn't I give to them that registering keeps being attractive.
- Should I install some groups/forums..... that every body can see but you can only apply for when you are registered?
- spam ?
- Will bring it more members or stop to many from registering.
- legally ?
- should I let the guests first agree to the terms, that you normaly have to agree to when you register, before they
are able to post. I think it makes everything to complicated. But may be it is necessary
- What problems else could occur?

What do you think? Any advices for me?

Enabling guest posting allows for a lot more chances of spam (however not so if done right) and a sort of dissattachment from a community.

In the worst case scenario all of your members are guests meaning there is no sense of community. Now guest posting isn't a bad thing and is done well on sites where people need quick answers (such as a support site) and don't have time / need to register. However if your truely trying to build a community I would disable guest posting.

If you must I would at least enable a good captcha mod to keep spammers at bay. I know the included one with phpbb2 sucks and has been broken by spammers.

Anyways some food for thought^^

You nailed it Goodomens. I'm a part of an forum that does a bad job managing guests. On another, I am one of the admins and let's just say that guests are a pet peeve of mine and don't get very far when trying to stir up the pot. I bring down a very heavy, authoritative hammer. =]

It's up to you. But I don't know how much you would like 10 year olds getting onto the forums and spamming, "booger" onto a thread for 20 minutes.