* Overcoming download limits in Discussion Boards and Forums

It's quite a common practice to limit the capabilities of newly registered users in forums, like not able to post messages, hiding parts of the posts, no access to the attachments etc.

Here's a workaround to overcome that using RSS feeds. I'm going to show how to download the attachments in posts that have restricted access (eg: you need to have at least 15 posts to access the attachment). The discussion board I'm subscribed to is a vBulletin based one, but most probably this trick will work for other forum softwares also.

This trick will work only if the RSS feeds are enabled with the forum. Now a days almost all forum scripts are activated with RSS feeds.

Step 1: Go to the forum/db. If you are using Mozilla Firefox, you can see a yellow/orangish icon in the address bar. (Check the address bar in the snapshot below. In this snapshot, you can also see the message that attachment can be accessed only if we have more than 10 posts)

Step 2: Click on that icon. You'll get a firefox page asking you what to use to read the RSS feeds. From the drop down list, select Google Reader.

Step 3: Login to Google reader using your google login (www.google.com/reader)

Step 4: Click on the thread with the attachment and there you go, the direct download link to the attachment (See the snapshot below. The file is the same one which has been shown as restricted in Step 1 screenshot).

Happy downloading :)