Forum Moderators: open
Alx, I think maybe with newcomers they just don't know how it all fits together or what to look for. Maybe even sometimes what to ask, or exactly what their own situation applies to. That comes with digging in and reading usually.
Are there any particular things you think would be helpful to categorize for a newcomer?
Post Hall Of Fame - and the nominees are? [webmasterworld.com]
An idiots guide. :) And i dont mean that in a bad way!
When I arrived I didnt have a clue about any of this and the main problem i faced was trying to put all the information into context.
I came from a marketing / IT background, so I probably has a slight advantage over most newbies, but it is still a lot of info.
Things that would be helpful:
Pagerank explained
Search Engine Relationships (the main players, who feeds who, etc)
Good web design practices
Writing Content
Reciprocal Links
Link popularity
Offline marketing
What to avoid doing?
Forum etiquette (i know there are various charters and stuff, but a summary of main points would be useful).
Im sure theres more, but these are the things that I first learned and it seemed to help! :)
JOAT
The idea is to have a bit more of a web-page experience to it. The forums are great and everything, but having a simple information delivery section, like the webmasterWorld Bible, with the top 100 things you will ever need to know would be great.
If you are adamant that everything here should be BBS, and gosh, please no web-page-plain-information-display, then there might be another option.
You could start something through a voting system maybe. get people to vote the relevancy of the thread, and maybe create a new forum of the top notch threads.
To say the honest truth my eyes hurt so much from plodding through hundreds of threads by now, It could well be that all this has been said before. So sorry if this is an obvious duh, been there, read it, bought the T-shirt thread.
So alxdean, what you're saying then is that it would help to have something that's in an easy to find format. I can see that, there's a lot to plow through.
When I arrived I didnt have a clue about any of this and the main problem i faced was trying to put all the information into context.
JOAT, I assume you mean web development and promotion altogether. Or was it just SEO? I think SEO is the one that probably most are clueless about with where to start first.
Let me ask this. Say if there were to be an idiot's guide to optimizing for Google, for example, completely outlining the basics in simple terms. Could that possibly be done all at once in one post or thread, or would that need to be broken down further?
SEO in particullar (but im not that techy so areas of web development as well).
I think long posts are like long web pages - off-putting.
Splitting a guide up into sections with links to good posts would be a better approach, i think.
Making it too easy though may just have the effect of people coming to the site, getting what they need, and leaving thinking they know it all. Whereas just now members hang around a bit and contribute - all the while picking up bits and pieces here and there.
just my thought, tho.
JOAT :)
If you were to create an idiots guide for SEO, HTML and Content you would be able to satisfy the information needs of probably 50% of all first time visitors.
Great out of the visitors point of view but bad for site statistics and the BBS. The effect could mean less page hits and less posts.
On the other hand though, it might just boost your popularity even more. Especially among the common folk, making mom and pop websites who have neither the patience to plow through dozens of posts nor the confidence to pop a question. So the end effect might be more inbound links, more popularity, and better ranking on google ;-)
But seriously, I have the feeling this website is still too much of an "insiders must know" site. with an idiots guide, promoted on the site (no point making it a teeny weeny link like the charter or the top nav links) it would become more useful for Joe public.
So Marcia, coming back to your question on how to implement an Idiots Guide, I personally think it would be best to stay away from the thread approach and stick more to the guide approach. Risky, but might well be worth its returns.
