Community not indexed

phpBB live for three months, no single SE indexes

[adfree]

I created a pre-fabricated phpBB via talkthis. Customization is great for visuals, none for linking, headers, footers, code.

So I don't have stats or any way to link out or introduce any other code, meaning: I am flying blind.

30 forums in 8 major cats, 20 posts by me (substantial ones too), no registration necessary (for now).

Y! and G find the homepage URL, nothing more (no tags, no content). Live doesn't even know my URL.

All this after three months. Someone from talkthis told me to create more content, but:
- before I invest more time I want to see at least that the content is spidered and indexed at least
- how does a forum look like that has 120 posts, all by the owner?

Any advice?

Thanks.

[rogerd]

Adfree, you raise a few issues. First, you should try spidering the site yourself. Do some server header checks to make sure all looks OK. A tool like Xenu Link Sleuth will simulate a fairly dumb spider - feed it your home page URL and see what else it finds.

You may discover that there is some technical obstacle to spidering - if you can't fix it in the structure they have provided, consider moving to a self-hosted forum that will give you complete control. There are various hacks to make phpBB more SE-friendly, and in your own setup you could decide which to install.

If you are able to spider the site yourself without a problem, you may just need more links and time.

As far as that startup period of low posting, don't put up hundreds of posts under your own ID if nobody else is participating. Get some friends to post, or, if all else fails, register another ID or two to ask some questions that will get a conversation started. There are some good articles in the library [webmasterworld.com] about how to jump start a new forum. Good luck!

[adfree]

Great response, THANKS!
Will keep on digging.

[jtara]

Do you have your own domain, a sub-domain, or simply a directory?

If you just have a directory on a larger site, your search engine positioning is going to be largely influenced by all the other communities on the same site.

[adfree]

Own domain widgetsforum.com but redirected to the format widgetsforum.provider.com.

[netchicken1]

make a sitemap of your forum, submit it to google and yahoo. Works for me :)

[adfree]

No control to upload G or Y! id file into the root :-(
And I can't even include it anywhere, no footer or header code access.