Same goes for anything on the Internet.

Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

*goes through over 10,000 posts to find something that Benny SURELY wouldn't want everyone to read*

good luck with wading through all that crap!

Yep , but by making the additional requirement of registering you are limiting those who can view stuff you post which I think is a good thing. It also encourages users to sign up rather than lurk and gives a better idea of how many people actively read the forum.

The main thing though is that it prevents search engines from picking up on stuff. Not many Trishans in the world and some of the comments I make on this forum....

This also ties in with your question about searching the forums Trishan, it seems Google doesn't index the forum content, only Board index pages show up in ANY search I tried...

ie [grand final site:888plforum.com.au] returns ZERO results, so does [trishan], so you don't have to worry about that mate

Bit surprised by this TBH...

And you do have to be logged in to use the forum builtin search, and that includes the 'View Active Topics' also.

Yeh that's pretty good that it doesn't.