As I independently suggested it on the other thread, I naturally agree with the idea of making the site invisible unless you are logged in. I repeat my suggestion that the home page provide "guest" log-in information for people who do not want to register, and do not want to post, but just want to check us out. That would keep us from losing potentially good members because they did not want to register before finding out more about us.
In the makeshift Erato in Exile site, I had a separate forum for people who wanted their poems to be invisible to those who were not logged in. The feature worked perfectly, near as I can tell. And as I mentioned in the other thread, I am a member of a very, very active site for the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrtors. It is busier site than Eratosphere for sure. But it's only visible to logged in members (paid membership, in fact), and it never shows up in search engines. In fact, children's book editors are notoriously fussy about prior publiction, yet I have seen manuscripts at the SCBWI site that later went on to be published as books. The invisibility option works. I strongly favor it.
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