How do you implement pages requiring login?

[jonesjitter]

I'm running a site with a member area and some public accessible pages. The member area obviously requires users to authenticate, while the public pages are indexable by search engines.

Our global navigation includes links to the restricted pages. At the moment, when a user isn't logged in and accesses a restricted page, we're 302-redirecting them to a login page.

We have a lot of external links pointing to restricted pages (eg. profile pages), and since we're 302-redirecting the juice from these links are lost.

I've been thinking about changing the redirect from 302 to 301. How would this look from a search engines view? The pages aren't per se permanently moved - the current user just isn't authenticated to view the content of the page at the moment.

Would it be a problem that navigation contains multiple internal links that all 301 redirect to the same login page?

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[DougRoberts]

A couple of thoughts (It's not something I've had to do)

Wouldn't you make the links on the navigation menu no-follow?

I'm assuming that you don't want search engines to index your members only content.

You don't want the members only content ranking for keywords do you (and if it's not being indexed then how can it?)

Would it not be an idea to try any get some value out of the inbound links by using 301 redirects to relevant indexed content when the user is not logged in?

I don't know what type of site/services you're offering, but if people following these external links to your member only content are potentially customers then it would be worth presenting them with a page that reassures them that the content they are looking for can be found within the site, present the benefits of becoming a member etc... Even better, If you can make the appeal relevant to the content they are trying to access.

Interested to find out what everyone else does!