Quote Originally Posted by YoDude9999 View Post
This works well to keep out the spammers, but it describes the mechanics of getting registered and gaining access to the forum. It doesn't however, touch on the issue at hand.

What's being said is that the forum should be open for read only access to all pages except for the Team only private areas. Being read only still keeps the spammers from spamming on the forum and using the current method for validating real people and granting them write access that's already in place, should remain so.
Yes, I posted my initial response before I saw the second page.... The not-viewable part was put in place before we had any private area. Also I believe this was comparable to the way the boards and forum were setup for other big teams lik Sic for example when we were planning our initial deployment so that is how we configured our setup as well.