Randomness
Forum Etiquette is a tough subject for many administrators and users alike. What is the right way to discuss topics with people? What slang of typing should we use?
I am one of the people who you’ll always see use proper (or what I consider proper) grammar and spelling. I find it almost tough to take someone who spells horribly, uses tons of internet and leet (1337) characters in their posts.
Not only is it a bit annoying for me to read on my forums, I get worried it may detract from older, experienced members of a niche from registering when they see childish “text talk” on a forum where real ideas and problems are being exchanged.
I have guidelines in my forums to discourage people from talking in many of the common short-character languages that the internet has created. I don’t want to hurt these people’s feelings, but it’s not professional or entertaining to me or many others who want somewhere they can read sentences, not a paragraph with no punctuation or periods. It’s actually come to the point where I notice that users who use proper grammar and spelling get helped much easier in my Camaro and Firebird Forums. Why would my other users waste time on attempting to read something that is more of a strain to them when they can just move on to the next post and help someone who put some time into their thread knowing that people are there helping them for free.
I guess that’s the end of my soapbox rant for the day.
The past few months has been quite an exciting time for me. I’ve just recently got engaged at the end of July, and we are now in the process of buying our first house. Right now it’s a almost-for-sure buy (depending on the inspection saturday morning). We bought a duplex here in Buffalo and plan on renting out the upstairs to help pay the mortgage while we live in the downstairs half of the house.
Looks like a very nice place so far, with tons of room, and its on a corner lot so a bigger yard than most houses in that area. Already has a fence which is nice when we toy with the idea of getting a canine to guard our precious belongings.
I’m happy to say that my main community focus for the past year; Camaro Forums is almost to 1,000 members. It’s taken me a bit less than 2 years to get this far on this forum. That may seem like a long time to some, and short to others.
I am happy to be where I am currently with F-Body Online (FBO). While many others dwarf FBO, we’ve managed to carve out a spot in the camaro and firebird world with nothing but hard work. I’ve not paid a single dollar in advertising, adwords, or anything of that sort for this forum. I’m not boasting about that because if I did have the cash to throw at it, I probably would have given in and done it but it didn’t work out that way.
Because of the age of the forum and its size, it’s become a very tight-knit community with very little drama (that’s VERY rare on an automotive forum especially) and one of my biggest concerns is to make sure that everyone feels comfortable posting and asking questions. Think about it- If you’re running a community based on users posting and interacting with others, being intimidated isn’t going to help you at all. I’ve received dozens of messages and emails from users just letting me know that we’re one of the most helpful and respectful communities they’ve been a part of and that lets me know that what I’m working for is worth it.
I’ve got some very big plans in store for FBO in the very near future. One of which I’ll give a little hint to here right now.
Been a while since I’ve had time to give updates on some of my communities and web design.
I’ve been quite busy working on a few projects I’m really excited about. One of which is a Fantasy Sports game with a focus on long-term strategy and financing your athletes. I wish I could say more on that front, but hopefully within a few weeks we’ll have a full launch. We’re currently working on the design as well as some finishing statistics touches. The plan as of now is to make this completely free, with the possibility of creating a even more realistic premium version later on down the road as it grows.
Another venture I’ve started is a Freelance Web Design site. I’m currently working with another programmer and we compliment one another well with our strengths to help just about anyone. With that I’ve started designing and coding some wordpress themes that I hope to start releasing within the next month or so.
That’s whats been going on as of recently, and I’ll keep updating on the status of the Fantasy Sports site.
I’m excited to announce I’ve started a new big project site I’ll be tweaking for about a month or so and then put in beta for some real-world testing.
I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a sports fantasy game that works quite well and is very heavy on the strategy and management side of the sport.
I’ll be posting a full scope of this project soon, but if anyone is a Fantasy Sports fan and would like to beta test for me let me know.
If anyone has any questions about vBSEO and are wondering if its worth the money. Well the short answer is YES!
I’m just a regular guy, who researched a bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics, and then ran across vBSEO and thought it looked interesting but couldn’t get over the price. About 5 months after my forum started I bit the bullet and bought the software for my Camaro & Firebird site.
I installed vBSEO on August 13th, 2007. I’ve had some up and downs since then, but one thing that has never gone down during this time is search engine referrals (especially google).
Since I installed Google Analytics only 2 and a half months before the install of vBSEO I can understand why skeptics could be a bit turned off by the above graph.
However, this one gives real proof
When a Forum that is little over 1 year old and has only 700 members is ranking higher on almost all terms than forums with 10’s of thousands of members and 5+ years online, something is working well.
Sure, I’ve done other things to help my search engine rankings as everyone should. No one states that vBSEO or any other SEO product is a magic install that just works and you can leave your site stagnant for 1 year and then blame them when it goes wrong. However, I am no SEO Expert, just a guy who started a site online, read some free articles and watched some videos, talked with others and am now on the top of google (for a few terms-more will come with time). I see the price tag of vBSEO now and wouldn’t think twice of buying a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th license if I had the forums that needed it.