XML/RSS Feeds

Forums giving their threads to sites who need content...

[zigx]

Does anyone do this? Did it turn over new people for your community?

Any random thoughts would be much appreciated.

[rogerd]

I've got a couple of blog-type sites that offer this. Not much traffic to date, but I've probably not promoted the availability well enough either.

A new vB3 forum I'm doing will offer this, and I DO think it will generate a few new visitors. To echo zigx's question, is anyone deriving good referrals from a forum feed right now?

And, any suggestions on how to effectively promote the availability of a feed? My thought was to put a visible headline or graphic, "Put Our Top Topics On Your Site" or similar, with a link to a page with some detailed instructions (and links to free scripts, etc.). I don't think a little "XML" button is enough in the current stage of development.

[lorax]

I've been contemplating this very feature but in my case I know a good number of people I want to approach with the idea. I trust word will get around once the feature goes live on their websites.

Another thought would be to include the link to the feed within the forum in a pinned thread.

[zigx]

i am not sure how visible the feeds are or what changes it makes to your content bc i have never done this myself. But an idea would be to create small sites that are specific to each forum and maybe use the forum content as content for the small site.

This could work nicely actually and would be a great way to get some niche specific sites with a good amount of relevant content in no time.

Of course you have to be the only one using the feed as u might be penalized for duped content.

Any thoughts?

[rogerd]

Hmmm, let me see if I understand the idea, zigx... If you have a forum, take a feed from one of the topics and use that as content for a different site?

It seems like the basic concept might be viable, and if your mirror site was sufficiently different in presentation and coding you could probably avoid current dupe content filters. Whether such an arrangement would survive a human review (after a competitor reported you have #1 and #2 positions with dupe content) is harder to say.

Or did I miss the point completely? ;)

[zigx]

nope, right on target.

That is somewhat what i was leading into. How hard is it to manipulate forum data with a feed?