Get free solutions from experts-exchange.com!
posted on July 7th, 2007
Experts-Exchange (EE), founded in 1996, is a collaboration platform for information technology professionals, designed to address specific areas of situation-based knowledge. It’s an online “ask an expert” site for computer related questions. [source: wikipedia]
According to the site itself you need to pay about 12 dollars a month to view the solutions given by the experts and other users of the site. At first glance this looks quite true because a regular visitor will see that all answers are grayed out (example), to be precise, there’s only one user that doesn’t need to pay in order to view the solutions: Google. No, I’m not kidding. The site gives Google free access because it wants to be indexed in Google’s search engine.
We can use Google’s advantage in two different ways:
1) This way is useful if you found an EE question on Google and only want to view the solution of that question. In order to view the solution, you only need to click the small
2) If you want to browse EE and if you want up to date solutions, you need to be recognized as the googlebot. With a Firefox extension called user agent switcher this’ll cost less than a few seconds:
1. Download and install the Firefox extension user agent switcher from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59?id=59
2. In Firefox, go to Tools -> User Agent Switcher -> Option, and add the Googlebot as an user agent
Description: Googlebot 2.1 (New Version)
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)3. In Firefox, go to Tools -> User Agent Switcher -> Googlebot 2.1
4. In Firefox, go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Exeptions
5. Type in the white text bar: www.experts-exchange.com and hit block.
6. In Firefox, go to Tools -> Clear private data -> select cookies -> hit clear private data now.
Now browse to EE and you’ll be able to view all solutions for free (proof)!
knight_47 said on July 9th, 2007 at 5:28 am :
lame, this doesn’t work! When using the googlebot user agent, I don’t even see the grayed out solution at all.
admin said on July 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am :
@knight_47:
Thanks for the warning, due to some strange reasons the googlebot appeared directly on my computer. Because it isn’t showing up on other computers directly I added the steps to add it to the guide.
Paul said on July 9th, 2007 at 2:43 pm :
Thanx for this! It works great! Now, if I could just find a working solution for the error I’m getting: Internet Explorer cannot find the Active Desktop HTML file. etc. etc… I’ve tried all the given solutions from EE, MSKB and other sources and I still get this error. When I try to register MSHTML.DLL I get this: MSHTML.DLL was loaded. but the DllRegisterServer entry point was not found. This file can not be registered.
Not sure if this is the place to ask… but I simply don’t know what else I can do.
Thanx again for the User Agent Switcher and Googlebot… EE will see (or not see) a lot more of me!
BaNZ said on July 12th, 2007 at 12:22 am :
Funny enough I accidently hit ctrl A on the website today. So I thought to myself why don’t I try post it on a notepad. After posting it I see all the greyed out text lol.
Much easier this way
FunnyFreak said on July 17th, 2007 at 3:59 pm :
It’s working great. THX
brent said on August 3rd, 2007 at 12:20 am :
since EE’s “security” engine appears to rely solely on CSS, you can view all the solutions by disabling stylesheets in your browser… with the Firefox web developer extension, this can be done with CTRL+SHIFT+S…
Albert said on August 12th, 2007 at 2:49 am :
Screw that… just do the Greasemonkey script. Works perfectly:
http://bloggablea.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/fixing-experts-exchange-with-greasemonkey/
Simon said on August 15th, 2007 at 8:28 pm :
Er.
Just scroll down.
Works on Internet Explorer.
Had to use Firefox to visit your page though :/