How to hide from Google et al?

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I'm doing some work with a non-profit organization, and would like to set up a private forum for everyone to communicate on, but don't want it available to the outside world. The most promising option I can find is to modify an htaccess file. I know about using robots.txt & adding robot meta tags in the <head>, but I also know that some bots will ignore them.

Does anyone have other suggestions?

TIA
#programming #google #hide
  • well a nofollow robots.txt will help a lot.
    Then just put up a password on the site, the worst that can happen is that your frontpage is indexed.

    You can also just create a directory or entry file on your domain that's not linked from any other place, that's one more layer a bot would have to find somewhere to gather more information.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Yeah I agree with Seovil,

      The onbly way to stop bots from indexing your site is with a password.

      Although some bots follow instructions (like those in robots.txt), there are plenty of otgers (like alexa.com) that completely ignore those instruction and index everything they find..

      Take care

      Bruce
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • another thing you can do is to set the options in the forum app so that people are forced to log in in order to see anything besides the login page. The bots won't get paste that.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Thanks, guys. That's what I was hoping to hear; that a password would stop the bots. Too bad John & Sarah Connor didn't know it could be that simple...
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    How to hide from Google et al?

    I'm doing some work with a non-profit organization, and would like to set up a private forum for everyone to communicate on, but don't want it available to the outside world. The most promising option I can find is to modify an htaccess file. I know about using robots.txt & adding robot meta tags in the <head>, but I also know that some bots will ignore them. Does anyone have other suggestions?