Hi, I just want to ask why all signatures disappears when I try to view the forum after I logout? Does this means that signatures is exclusive only for logged in forum members to view?
Yes. Non-members cannot view signatures. They can only see the content of the posts in the threads.
That way people won’t spam the forums to get their make money sites some cheap backlinks.
With the sig links that actually have some value it means that we miss out on guests seeing them and following them. That number would be relatively small compared to the number of logged in members who follow them as when that was introduced I didn’t notice any significant difference in the number of people following my sig links.
In return for that very small loss we get a forum where there are far fewer people posting garbage in the hope of getting search engines to see their links - not that sig links in the forum have any value in the search engines at all anyway (or if they do it is so small as to be unnoticeable) - not that spammers have ever stopped sending spam just because it has almost zero effect as is clearly shown by all the spammers who waste time trying to get links from forums where the search engines can see and ignore their links.
I see, that is fantastic.
I think that this way you can stop spamming but this way no webmaster will get any backlinking advantage. What do you say about this? Even after logging in the links seems to be no-follow.
actually, hiding signatures from the search engines is the best decision sitepoint forums have made in years
sitepoint is a discussion forum, not a free link directory
Only Register members can view links in signatures