Keith,

The forum was set up with the hidden feature turned on by default. All it does is hides whether a person is online or not. Their name still shows up in the member list, but instead of showing the last time they were logged in, it just says hidden. So you can go through the member list and find who has set their status to hidden and who hasn't. To become hidden, click on profile in the upper center of any forum page, this will take you to your profile page. In the third section, called preferences, there is a line that says "Hide your online status". Check the yes box and then click submit at the bottom of the page and you will now be a hidden user. As admin, I can see everybody, no matter what their status.

I left the hidden option on pretty much out of curiosity. I though it would be interesting to see how many and who would use it. I can turn it off. It doesn't really matter to me. Maybe I'll create a poll to see what everybody thinks.

If I didn't allow guests, only registered users would be able to read the forums, and that just wouldn't look good to new visitors. Most would just move on to the next web site.  As to telling what an individual has or hasn't read, just becuase they log in, doesn't mean they read everything that is posted. Seems there is always room for denial no matter what.

Another reason to allow guests is for search engines. I now have these forums set up so that when a search engine comes, they can read the forums and increase our rank. So anytime someone mentions Oliver tractors, or other key words, the search engines will eventually find it and move us up the list for that combination of words. We are visited by Google and MSN several times a day, so thanks for the advertising and support guys!!