Warning pages on WP MU blogs?

[odysseus]

I have always held to the idea that with any site I build, the index page should be a warning page. No exceptions. I know many bloggers don't follow that rule, but I always have.

So, now I'm playing with wordpress MU, and putting all of my blogs on subdomains. With MU, the subdomains are made up virtually by some magic of .htacess which is beyond my meager comprehension. The subdomain doesn't actually exist for me to put up an index.html page on.

So, my question to the more experienced bloggers is, should I worry? I know it's not LAW that you should have a warning page, but it's always been a best practice kind of thing for me. I don't show genitalia on my sites, just tits, ass, and selectively posed nudity so to speak. If I put a small notice at the top of the sidebar, do you think that should suffice to keep me in the "nice guy league"?

Also, If my 2257 link points to domain.com, as opposed to subdomain.domain.com, is that a big deal?

Thanks for the input!

[sunfunbill]

I would not worry about it. I'm not going to make a warning page on mine. If your doing things right your traffic is coming in through other pages anyway.

Can't tell you about the other question.

[odysseus]

Originally posted by sunfunbill
I would not worry about it. I'm not going to make a warning page on mine. If your doing things right your traffic is coming in through other pages anyway.

Right, none of my warning pages on my blogs have more than a PR of 1. Most are PR 0, so I know the traffic is going around it, and that's ok by me. I never link to the warning page from any of my own pages, or from directories or link trades. It's there, "just because". I feel it's important to at least show some effort that I'm trying to keep minors off the site.

[Cozy Monica]

The only purpose a warning page really serves is to show that you've made at least some effort to prevent minors from viewing your content.

I think if you can't put a warning page on, you could consider putting a warning page statement at the very top of your page. I've seen some sites do this.

[Hammer]

If you put the disclaimer in your sidebar that's better than nothing but if you have nudity on the main page it kind of defeats the purpose. Frankly, I think it's best to always have a warning page on the index page of the main domain or any subdomain. As far as the 2257 link, the law says it should appear on every page of the site. It doesn't really matter where the statement page is located, meaning on the subdomain or main domain.

[odysseus]

Originally posted by Hammer
If you put the disclaimer in your sidebar that's better than nothing but if you have nudity on the main page it kind of defeats the purpose. Frankly, I think it's best to always have a warning page on the index page of the main domain or any subdomain. As far as the 2257 link, the law says it should appear on every page of the site. It doesn't really matter where the statement page is located, meaning on the subdomain or main domain.

I agree that it kind of defeats the point. That's pretty much the answer I was looking for. As for the 2257 link on every page, that's something I've overlooked, and have only had it on the index page of whatever domain or subdomain I've been working on. But that's easily fixed, so thanks for the input there, Hammer. As an aside, if all of your images are softcore, or toons, do you still need the statement to say in effect that all the stuff is exempt?

It's kind of a bummer that I didn't know MU sets up these virtual subdomains before starting this project. Anyone have any idea on how to incorporate some kind of warning anyway. Maybe a javascript that pops up a message box before loading the page would work, but I fear that that would turn away enough traffic for me to need to find another idea.

[anotherF]

Why dont you use a layer ad style pop up,if you use a cookie you only needto display it once.

[theviking]

home.php is the mainpage on the mu setup.

[odysseus]

Originally posted by theviking
home.php is the mainpage on the mu setup.

I'm sorry, but I don't get it. I don't have anything but 404 right now at domain.com/home.php . index.php points to the main page of the domain, but I'm talking about the individual blogs themselves. I know the main blog on the main domain has a home template, similar to the default kubrick, is that what you mean?

AnotherF. I had toyed with the idea of using a javascript similar to your layer ad idea, but figured I'd lose a ton of visitors, and that it might not be good for SEO (though I'm not sure about that last bit). Do you have any stats to hopefully prove me wrong on my assumptions?

[theviking]

Originally posted by odysseus
I'm sorry, but I don't get it. I don't have anything but 404 right now at domain.com/home.php . index.php points to the main page of the domain, but I'm talking about the individual blogs themselves. I know the main blog on the main domain has a home template, similar to the default kubrick, is that what you mean?

AnotherF. I had toyed with the idea of using a javascript similar to your layer ad idea, but figured I'd lose a ton of visitors, and that it might not be good for SEO (though I'm not sure about that last bit). Do you have any stats to hopefully prove me wrong on my assumptions?

Why do you want a warning on each and every blog.. wh... youre american ... humm... as it is suggested before... try some javascript that takes them to the front page.

these laws are freakin me fuckin out....

[odysseus]

Well, javascript seems to be the answer then. Thanks guys.

[January]

Sorry for bumping an old thread. I joined this site back in January, but my account wasn't approved until yesterday. I wanted to come back to this thread, because it bugged me when I first read it, since I know exactly how to do this but couldn't post until now. You do not need JavaScript (which I've noticed that porn surfers are much more likely to have disabled than the general public is).

Anyhow, create a warning page and call it "index.html" and upload it to your blog's top level directory. Unless your server is very strangely configured, it will load "index.html" before it loads "index.php", allowing the .html page to be the main page for the directory. Link the "Enter" link on the .html page to the index.php page. Nothing bad will happen because you have two pages named "index"; your server will handle them as though they had completely different names, and WordPress will only interact with the .php one. I've actually run sites that had both in the past with no trouble.

Another option would be to just create the warning page as a page within WordPress and then tell WordPress that you want that page to be the default landing page (was an option in older versions of WordPress, not sure if it still is or not).