Writing Archive

Invision Power Board 3

Posted 27. Feb, 2010 in Forums

I actually can’t believe I have never touched this on my blog but have posted my insight to this software elsewhere, seems bizarre to be frank! Anyway, Invision Power Board (or IPB), the third full instalment milestone for the forum software giant actively developed by Invision Power Services. I have been a customer of theirs for a good few years now and have been on the platform since the good ol’ InvisionFree days, which ran on version 1.3. Jumping from strength to strength, IPB has been at the headlines for incorporating features not seen in other software and setting standards such as the social profiles (which arrived in version two) to allow Administrators to bring the community closer and have a more open userbase.

Being set in the light as the main competitor to vBulletin, these two platforms have had fan boys battling it out on numerous boards for around three thousand years and still none have been proven right or wrong. I just want to get it out in the open that I am not a vBulletin fan, nor am I an IPB fan boy. I simply don’t like the vBulletin model on raising prices and the software is bare ugly.

IPB 3 IndexThe first thing that brought me over to IPB from MyBB and phpBB was the sheer scale of the software, the Administration Panel is like a separate program in itself, the social profiles look impressive with the custom fields you can easily create and comments can be posted, profile photos uploaded, plus an ‘About Me’ section is included. With the software looking very sexy even on it’s default template, the designers throwing out templates are incredibly talented and what was (and still is) being produced is to a high standard. The main hub I use for all my IPB skin purchases (they are doing vBulletin now too) is SkinBox.

Along with some great designs available for use, you have a whole new plugin system built into the newest version. Hooks for your sidebar and applications to increase functionality are just two examples of how you can customize the board easily with less file edits then before. With extending the board, upgrading and even the installation are both painless and simple to accommodate newer, less experienced Administrators.

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Submit your forum to directories

Posted 25. Feb, 2010 in Forums, Internet

Links, links, links! Some Administrators are starting to feel a craze for the special ‘page rank’, what they don’t realize is, that by focusing too much on trying to get links, they are neglecting their community, their content, their rankings and are ultimately killing their forum in the process. You need not worry about your page rank, most visitors don’t even consider it (actually, most targeted audience probably haven’t got a toolbar displaying it nor know what it actually means), it will come after time anyway.

If you have focused on PR ranks too much or are just getting a grasp with your community (maybe a good 50 posts a day) then you might start to think about submitting your site to the various directories around the Internet. If so, fantastic!

What is a directory?

Web directories are simply a way of harvesting links to other places on the web and categorizing them for visitors. Do not mistake directories for search engines, they are two completely different minds. Most (if not all) directories are humanly edited, they have one to a few reviewers per section and are dedicated in taking a look at each submission to see if the site is fit for addition into the index of sites.

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Basic Steps: Advertising Your Forum

Posted 19. Aug, 2009 in Forums

Having created your forum with a perfect idea, using the best design, posted a few threads inside your fantastically structured forums and setting up rules etc. there is one thing your missing. Advertising.

Why Advertise?

You might ask yourself this before and during the forum promotion process. “Why should I spend hours advertising my forum, using services and optimizing practices?”, I think it is useful as you can remind yourself of the task list that you need run through.

With the different, non exciting (I’m afraid so, but the results are more than satisfying!), processes in which you get your forum’s brand out there and gain traffic, you really do learn an awful lot about Administration & how the Internet works. You need to note one thing – people search. The search engines are there for a reason, to be used to find relative information as to what the user is looking for. Your goal is to be at the top of relative searches that contain your niche.

One of many reasons to advertise is to receive traffic, it is most important to newer, smaller forums that aren’t able to stand on their own two legs just yet. Another good reason for advertising and forming partnerships with other web masters/forum owners is that you will find valuable relationships arise and are very good in exchanging both traffic and PR (Page Rank) juice to one another through the connections with good authority, that is of course if you are one of those folk that care so much about their PR.

Signatures

The basic and most effective way to advertise on other forums, why? Because they are on every single post you make, they are shown in your profile and you can even have a really well designed image to aid in the effectiveness of drawing potential visitors to your forum. Many people may not even create a signature, not even place a link in there until they have maybe 400 posts or so, what a waste of potential traffic.

You have 3 posts on this particular thread page, there have been 69 views so far – that equals to 60+ (depending on how many times you have viewed the thread) people seeing your signature 3 times, thus having a good chance on clicking through if they find something interesting.

As you can see, signatures can really make a difference in an effective forum advertising campaign on other boards. An even better result would be for posting good content on your competitor’s forum with your signature active to help gain the right, relative traffic that will benefit your own forum the most. All in all – use signatures!

Profile Links

Though not as effective and viewed enough to be considered anywhere near as worthy as your signature, your profile link can send a few visitors your way nonetheless. Being in your main profile, should people find you interesting and wish to see your previous posts etc., and in your side posting mini-profile (if enabled by Administrators) it can be useful to link to your forum just to be safe.

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Using Social Media for forums?

Posted 18. Jun, 2009 in Forums

This post is taken from my other site: bbAuthority

No way? Yes way! How many of you actually use Social Media for your advantage? Not many I bet.

How do I use it to help my forum?

You can use it in a number of ways, I actually can’t list them all as people will use social networks and social media sites differently. You can easily optimize your profile with a few links to your site, maybe a few pages and then start making friends, lots of friends. Comment on their profiles, look at their interests etc. and if they use forums then message them about yours (this is especially effective if you own a promotion board as they are in the exact same boat as you).

socialmediachart

Once you build (or have built) a good network ‘hub’ on the big sites, you can start to branch out onto smaller networks, submit articles to Digg, tweet with Twitter and comment on blogs. “But blogs aren’t social media sites or networks Rich!”, this is true but what you have to remember is once people start commenting on blog posts they leave marks with links to their blogs, then they have links on their posts to other blogs from commenter’s. This process gradually grows in size until you come across maybe 100 blogs you have never heard of that are fairly popular or (even better) cover your forum theme.

You can just keep enlarging your horizons on advertising, promotion and commenting while your site gets larger. With having a steady rise of links as your forum grows in size, it should accommodate the increase in demand for more traffic, while catering for the visitor’s needs with a wider variety of content.

Why should I use it?

The main big bonus (and that’s a Brucey bonus!) for using Social Media in promoting your forum is traffic, lot’s of traffic. Remember the games where you can link up score multipliers?

scoremulti-300x168

Think of promoting on Social Media (using correct and effective practices) as a bonus multiplier of a million. “That can’t be right Rich, a million would get me so much traffic!”, well that is true, maybe not a million but you catch my drift. So why are you sitting around and not jumping on this bandwagon of traffic miners? Think of how many hits you could get on your Facebook or MySpace profiles alone, they average millions of visits per day.

Are there any disadvantages?

The only disadvantages are the most obvious, if you have already started your SEO homework and have got a comfortable knowledge of what to do. Some of you may find disadvantages as follows:

  • It may get extremely fustrating, if no traffic goes to your site or if you are targeting the wrong audience.
  • It can get very dull and boring, being active on other people’s blogs, on media profiles etc. can get a bit repetitive.
  • It is (or should be) a long process, I am not talking about over night stuff here guys, you need to be in for the long run.
  • If done obviously, ’spam’ like, using robots or any other black hat or  techniques, you could damage your site or even worse, get the ol’ Google punishment.

Other than the above listed, you should be fine with Social Media promotion in the long run along side your forum. If you are serious enough on gettign a successful community under your belt, start it all off, get the ball rolling and you should find some hope at the end of the tunnel.

One last thing: If you can, do yourself a favour and install Google Analytics on your forum.

/Rich

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SMF 2.0 cuuuurv

Posted 04. May, 2009 in Forums

SMF have been developing their new release, version 2.0 of the widely popular free forum platform. Being such an easy to use software, simple click install plugins & some amazing looking designs, Simple Machines Forum software really has got a solid userbase. To raise the hype even further with the upcoming release, they have announced a new design for v2.0!

smfcurv

Looking at the screenshot above, it does look a lot cleaner then the previous default SMF themes. It boasts smoothness & easy usability to have a punch at the upcoming IPB release’s smooth ‘web 2.0′ look.  Having used SMF a year ago, I can quite safely say that myself, along with other forum administrators, will be watching this closely to see what happens. Here are a few points mentioned on the announcement:

  • A fresh and smooth design that is easy on the eyes.
  • Expandable css-based drop-down menu capability on the Board Index, Profile, Moderation, and Administration pages
  • Better semantic use of tables and other XHTML tags.
  • Increased use of CSS for positioning and styling of elements

The theme will be included within version 2.0 RC2 release, for more information follow the following link :)

SMF ‘Curved’ Announcement >>

Rich.

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MyBB Software Future

Posted 28. Apr, 2009 in Forums

There is not much happening over in the world of MyBB at the moment, all is quiet infront of the doors of the developers. However, there is a nice little cheeky post about the features they are planning for versions; 1.4.5, 1.6 & the long awaited 2.0!

Version 1.4.5

Work is currently going to completing MyBB 1.4.5. It will contain over 100 various fixes, and include performance and stability improvements among other things. We want to put MyBB 1.4.5 through a 2-week beta testing phase before we release it to the general public. This is done in order to ensure we minimize any regressions from changes that have been made to the code since MyBB 1.4.4 and so you can have a smooth transition upgrading from MyBB 1.4.4 to MyBB 1.4.5.

MyBB 1.4.5 is deffinately going to be a support release, fixing a ton of fixes & bugs + stability improvements can never be a bad thing, expecially with all the software becoming all the more complex with every release, adding new features and using new technology.

Version 1.6

We are steadily and diligently working on development for MyBB 1.6. There have been 17 features/improvements officially “completed” and are in the process of Quality Analysis. We have several more near completion. You won’t be seeing any huge changes in MyBB 1.6 and we have taken steps to ensure that when MyBB 1.6 is officially released it will be a stable release. This is done so we can keep the impact on theme creators and plugin and mod authors down to a minimal level. This will lead to a smooth transition between MyBB 1.4 and MyBB 1.6 and I’m looking towards at least 60% of all plugins should still work with MyBB 1.6 with minimal changes (essentially just the “compatibility” indicator updated for most).

Everyone has been eagerly waiting for both versions 1.6 & 2.0, which will be major releases. Although stated that 1.6 will focus on stability & feature enhancements, they are keeping it backed to 1.4.5 to keep the ‘changes’ as low as possible to ensure that most of the plugins still work with the new release.

Version 2.0

We have been brainstorming, sharing ideas, sharing mockups, etc for the past few months. We will probably be brainstorming and trying new ideas for MyBB 2.0 for the most part all the way up to the general testing of MyBB 1.6 and then we will shiftgears to MyBB 2.0.

They are still hush hush about the whole version 2.0 release of the fostware platform, but we are sure we will be able to dig up some information on pre-1.6 release. We will update you guys with any new information as soon as it pops up.

Rich.

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