Why are guests listed as being able to view forums (in Who's Online feature)?

[Bobbi]

I set the options so that unregistered users can only view the Tech Support forum on my forums. They have to register to see the rest. So why do I sometimes get "guests" listed in the Who's Online feature which indicates that they're elsewhere on the site?

I tested the visibility of the forums by clearing out my PC's cookies and trying to access the forums as an unregistered user. But it still did show only the name of the Tech Support forum. (However, I can't view any of the topics listed for that forum - it only says "no topics posted during the past 30 days," which isn't true. How do I correct that?)

a sample Who's Online list (part of it, anyway):
[I know that the forums listed below seem to just be referring to the main page, but from what I remember, I've also seen specific forum names listed next to guests)-



Bobbi_R.
Searching Forums

CapitalistMonkey
Viewing Attachment in Thread

McSexyz in da house!
Viewing Thread It is me.."Jason"

Sima
Viewing User Control Panel

Swallow
Viewing Forum All Things Considered

Guest Our Music Eyes
Main Index

Guest
Viewing Forum

Guest
Using Private Messaging System

[Chen]

Who's Online reffers to user location - it doesn't consider whether the user is actually seeing the page, or just getting an error message. In this case, it's the latter.
And since you tried to view the forum as a guest, and did not succeed, you got nothing to worry about.

[Bobbi]

Okay! But what do I do about the topics being unviewable for the one forum that is visible to unregistered users? (The Tech Support forum is visible to unregistered users - I tested this - but when you try to access any topics it just says "no topics posted for the past 30 days," which isn't true.)

[Chen]

1. Can a register user see the topics?
2. Is "Can view others' threads" in the forum permissions for the guests set the Yes?

[Bobbi]

Originally posted by FireFly
1. Can a register user see the topics?
2. Is "Can view others' threads" in the forum permissions for the guests set the Yes?

I'll double-check on that shortly - partly because I now see a guest viewing a thread that supposedly is not accessible to him or her, as an unregistered user:

Guest
Viewing Attachment in Thread 'The Birth of Brian'

[Bobbi]

Registered users can definitely see the topics.

As for your second question (user permissions for unregistered users), I just double-checked on that and everything is set to 'no' except for 'can view board' (and in 'forums', only the Tech Support forum is marked as visible for unregistered users). So, what should I do now?