Message Boards will help in the Search Engines

A well posted to message board can bring much traffic

[EliteWeb]

Having a well rounded, constantly posted to discussion board will help you out in the search engines. I have many web pages that have a good amount of visitors. Once I setup the message board things changed I got many many more visitors, both returning and from the Search engines.

Before the discussion board the percentages were low for the engines, nice and equil for the most part, for example Google's results brought 100-200 people to our site a day, with the discussion board Google brings 400-800 a day.

Many people miss out on having a message board because they do not want people searching for something on the engines then coming to a message board. Modify the board, include your sites navigation around the message board in the templates. That way people can easily weave in and out of message board and your site. Having a message board is not anything new, just missed out by many people ;)

It is also a stickyness factor, having the sites feel built around the board brings people back constantly and often visiting your main page.

[diddlydazz]

Eliteweb,

I am going to be putting a message board on one of my hobby sites soon, I have Perl and Access, is there a FREE (hobby site) script you can recommend ?

Something that is customisable and aesthetically pleasing ?

I would love to hear your views/experiences/recommendations on this.

Regards

Dazz

[webdiversity]

Good post EliteWeb.

I used to have a discussion forum on my web site, but when I moved hosts I had some technical problems and pulled it down. It certainly made a big difference. One thing I noticed was that even though there was a lot of visitors not that many posted, so they were all lurking trying to pick up ideas.

One thing though, which BB would you say is the easiest to configure, easiest to alter the look/feel and integrate with your site ?

[brotherhood of LAN]

diddlydazz

just to get your feet wet on the subject you can try Snitz forum, which runs on ASP

Personally, I want to run a message board, but im a bit worried about bandwidth. All the free forum scripts I see are a bit messy and bandwidth hungry, and of course, although I can strip them down a bit, alias, the fact is Id be breaking the law

How hard is it to make one from scratch???? :)

[diddlydazz]

<<<--- How hard is it to make one from scratch????

I don't think it would be too difficult, but I am all for an easy life;)

Dazz

<added>
Yeah, looking at snitz, I have seen that forum structure in many a site including one of mine :), someone offered to run a forum for me and I said yes and that's what they use.
I want something a bit less graphical (if thats the right word) something a bit more formal looking, how far can you customise snitz ?
</added>

[diddlydazz]

Also,

I really want a Perl script :(

I like Perl and I would be able to customise more easily.

Suggestions ?

Dazz

p.s I can install MySQL if I need to.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Ive deleted the zip but ill check it out again. I have a ready installed version that you can play with thats on a private URL.

Ive just stickied it to you...

You will have to refer to the site in regards to copyright infringements and editing

[diddlydazz]

Thanks,

I am checking it out ;)

Dazz

[diddlydazz]

Are the pages spiderable ?

Dazz

[brotherhood of LAN]

I think so, check out the FAQ,

You could pretty much leave teh "active posts" area unspiderable and archive/edit the content you want spidered / ie a summary of previous topics

I dunno if youd want to let spiders loose all over a forum, too many different people with their own writing styles and keyword abusing tendencies :)

[diddlydazz]

<<<--- I dunno if youd want to let spiders loose all over a forum, too many different people with their own writing styles and keyword abusing tendencies

Ask any drug addict, a HIT is a HIT :)

Dazz

[brotherhood of LAN]

Just as a refresher, there was a thread a month or 2 back about whether you should spider a forum, or what you should spider

I tried site search for it but it ignored the word forum! But it is somewhere nearby.....

[Marcia]

>too many different people with their own writing styles and keyword abusing tendencies

A lot of time needs to be put into forums to be able to keep them going; they need a lot of attention. Also, some forums are now PR0 (with the penalty not lifted), so all link issues are an important consideration.

[diddlydazz]

HHHmmmm...

I seem to remember the thread as well, The last thing I need is for this site (hobby) to join the PR0 club.

Oh well, it should still help with stickyness anyway :)

Dazz

[jimbo_mac]

diddlydazz, have you tried ikonboard?

quite easy to install and is also customisable to a degree.

[diddlydazz]

thanks jimbo_mac,

I will check it out.

Dazz

[Marcia]

psssttt.. Dazz ====>> CLICK HERE [webmasterworld.com]. ;)

Sticky it would probably be, but in your place I'd put it on a separate domain, or at first at least a separate section of the site, and keep all spiders out until I saw how it was going. You could have a forum information page that people could link to that could in turn link to the forum itself with index,nofollow in the robots meta tag, and exclude the forum itself with robots.txt

I've got a client site I'm contemplating developing some community features for, and that's exactly what I'd do if a forum were to be considered.

If it starts to go well, take on a couple of moderators who are ruthlessly committed to keeping it clean, ethically sound and spam-free, and who don't worry excessively about whether people like them or not, because some won't. That'll help to make sure it remains a comfortable environment for the majority, and protects the integrity of the information - especially important if it's a hobby site.

[diddlydazz]

Thanks for the advice Marcia and the link ;)

I would be testing it out first before I let spiders loose on it, Hhhhmmmm.... Moderators..... Wanna Job :)

In accordance with the regs (link you posted), I will keep it to myself which board I use :) (until I need help;))

Dazz

[Marcia]

LOL.. Dazz, I posted the link so you'd see what you could be up against. It's really something worth planning for, and very important to have good Terms of Service in place right from the start.

I've heard some good things about phpBB and the ones I've seen look very good. The more I'm reading about PHP the more I'm starting to find it appealing.

[diddlydazz]

Sorry Marcia couldn't resist :)

I have been looking at a few in the usual places, there seems to be a lot claiming to do the same things.

I think the best thing is get a few and try them out, bit time consuming but probably worth it.

(if anybody has done the testing already then let me know;))

Dazz

[brotherhood of LAN]

Yep,

I had a forum "ready to go" but you should plan aplently before implementing one. The link Marcia sent was teh one I was meaning.

Im gonna take a new approach, if I want a forum like Snitz, im gonna learn how to make one myself :)

g'luck with the forums dazz, im gonna stay away from makin forums until the year end (when Ive made one) :)

[jimbo_mac]

psssttt...marcia

wmw is about sharing information isnt it??

trying to help fellow webmasters seems to turn you into a professional forum spammer.

I installed THE program myself a few months ago, if I am advertising a product I shoulnd't have then I offer you my sincerest apologies.

[diddlydazz]

jimbo_mac

Marcia wasn't referring to you, don't worry you haven't done anything wrong :)

I appreciate your post.

Don't worry ;)

Dazz

[Marcia]

jimbo_mac, we're staying in context with the original topic of this thread, which is talking about setting up forums and that forums increase traffic.

I'm trying to illustrate to dazz why his or any forum will need a lot of attention and thought as to how it's done. Freely distributed and open source software is no problem, its one of the best things around. But while installing can take 10 minutes to an hour, that's only a very small part of it. Upkeep and maintenance need to be constant, you have to count the cost in terms of time to keep it going properly.

>trying to help fellow webmasters seems to turn you into a professional forum spammer.

Trying to help fellow webmasters is exactly what it's all about, and it wouldn't be helping anyone to *not* tell them about the whole picture. I won't go into details, but I did some more looking today and saw two forums attached to what were high PR, high ranking sites with the PR0 penalty. One has affected the entire site.

I'll repeat - I personally would not have a forum on a site, especially with an abundance of outbound links, unless it was excluded from spidering, or very carefully monitored for the sake of safety. While a forum may encourage stickiness and increase traffic, an influx of new traffic will be severely disabled if a site is penalized, and repeat traffic can't possibly compensate for that kind of a loss.

[brotherhood of LAN]

I agree with what Marcia is saying

with so many automated robots, ruthless/novice spammers and the likes, youre going to have to monitor what content is available for viewers and robots alike to see.

I like the idea of having "active posts" not being able to be spidered while archived discussions are changed to a static format and can be spidered (after checking out the thread in detail)

maybe then id think about it.....and id have to get people to volunteer at that

but no doubt, lots of traffic, no doubt an increase in page views to visitor ratio too, and return visitors. But on that note, bandwidth.

Many advertisers disapprove of having ads on forum pages purely because of the rate of which pages are viewed :) So that leaves you with alternative methods like the above right and some very kind volunteers ;)

For sure, I think any web site with a long term view must have some sort of way that like minded people can exchange thoughts i.e. a forum. I will definetely be wanting one in the wrong one, but my highest priority is a non-bandwidth muncher, and just by looking at the layout code of the forum i mention above, i woouldnt be wanting to use it on this occassion, but nonetheless, something to play around with to learn more about forum usage

As a side note, I have had net access since '95, with steady access the last 3 years, and this is the first forum I have used for more than a few posts :)

[Key_Master]

My forum brings in thousands of unique visitors per week and I have many top 10 keyword placements in search engine results because of it. All outbound links are automatically modified by the forum software. E.g. if somebody drops an URL to:

http:/www.some_other_site.com/

The script converts it to:

http:/www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/outbound_link.cgi?site=http://www.some_other_site.com/

Since directory /cgi-bin/ is protected by robots.txt the links are not followed by abiding spiders. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to set of a similar type of forum on your own site. I say go for it. Sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too. Just make sure to keep the content of the forum on topic.

[brotherhood of LAN]

sounds like a great idea, im all for that sort of thing

[diddlydazz]

Is Snitz Bandwidth hungry ?

Dazz

[Brett_Tabke]

>the links are not followed by abiding spiders.

Not followed, but I believe they are noted. The link is actually on the page that is indexable.

[brotherhood of LAN]

>Snitz bandwidth

When I edited the code for spaces etc etc I cut the code by 50%. That was before investigating how the ASP worked the forum and if any of that could be removed

So yeah, without changing it, it may not be bandwidth hungry, but all in all not very efficient in regards to bandwidth