Spidering site with "login" gate

[The Ney]

Hi...
Is there any way to make spiders spider the site that regular visitors have to enter password, or to download a file in order to enter ?
If not, then i reckon that i have to create one entrance page that will be SE optimized, but does it then affect my ranking in any way, due to the fact that, as far as spiders are concerned, my site is 1 page deep ?

[highman]

First of all does the site need to have a login? you are presenting yourself with problems for spider based engines and some directories

Your site only being one page deep will not hold well with the the SE's, if you are in a comptitive area you are really going to suffer.

You could build a copy of the site to sit along side your password protected site and exculde the password site with your robots.txt file (just in case).

But it all depends on why the site is password protected

Welcome to the forums 'The Ney' :hi:

[The Ney]

Thank you for your warm welcome.
The thing is that the site i am optimizing is very commercial, and there is no way that i can give up the login thing. Actually it is not the login it is that in order to use our site, customers have to download a file, and only then they can browse a site.
If i build a parallel site next to it. i have to link it somehow to my entrance page, so spiders can go through it, but that means that there will be an active link (even if i hide it) to the content of my site, for which i want the people to pay for....
Or am i getting you wrong ?

[highman]

mmm.... I will have to give this some thought,

<thinking out loud>

frames immediatly spring to mind as does IP delivery, the no frames content could allow spiders access but would also allow users access if they knew what they were doing, allowing access by IP could be the solution but is labour intensive to keep updated and you always run the risk of exculding a spider by having out of date IP addresses, you could also use some sort of browser detection for (example) does the browser have flash installed (spiders dont)

</thinking out loud>

Im sure there will be other ideas from other members, interesting first post Ney :)

p.s. I wouldnt go down the hidden link route

[The Ney]

exactly....
i can build a rather long introduction (although not too long, for the sake of the visitors) that will have several pages which i can optimize. Do you have any idea how many introduction-pages would be optimal ?

[Mel]

HI The Ney and welcome to the forums.

Interesting question but I think more information is needed. You say that the users must download a file before they can browse the site. Can you say why they must download a file?

Is the site formatted in such a way that this file is needed to view the site? Are the pages readable by spiders (remember they don't have the same capabilities as a modern browser)?

Since spiders cannot get past the password protection and could not read the pages if they were encrypted or something similiar, in either of these cases the spider simply couldn't read your site.

If you decide to produce an spider readabel home page, then you shoud try to put up sefveral pages, again depending on how competitive you area is.

[The Ney]

Thanx guys...

It is great to have a place where you can find a huge diversity of opinions and crystalize an decision...

Thanks again