Creating a forum
-
We're looking into creating a forum for our visitors.
I've identified that our target market is very active on online forums, and that this is the best way of encouraging user participation amongst our audience (I know forums as such are a bit old-fashioned, but so is our audience!)
I have never set a forum up before... I was wondering if there was anything your collective brains could come up with in terms of a 'wish list' the forum should have... For example, I want to limit spam (LOL, I know, losing battle) - what measures would you put in place to do this? I was thinking that users would have to create a login to participate, and that they would only be allowed to post links after a certain number of posts - is there anything else I've missed?
We will be looking to promote the forum via email marketing to our customers, and will set up logins for them each, and invite them to join individually. There are about 10,000 people we could invite in this way (list is growing every day, so it could very well be a lot more by the time we launch!)
What else would you suggest? I was thinking of display advertising (maybe via adwords remarketing), and obviously we'll be looking to list organically (but I don't think this can happen instantly, I kind of feel it's a chicken/egg thing - we need the participation before we get ranked, but to get participation we probably need to be ranked!)
I was also wondering if we should set it up on a subdomain or not? I'm in two minds about which is best for us!
Anyway, any input from you would be enormously beneficial.
Thank you!
-
We are looking into an MVC plugin for our umbraco site. I believe there can be custom elements, such as the sign-up process.
Would you say it's better to host it on a sub-domain? I'm thinking this is the way forward. What are your thoughts?
Within our niche there are three very popular forums, none of which seem to have severe spam issues. I expect they are well moderated (and I've said this is a necessity). Ours will have someone looking after it (moderating) as well as people dedicated to answering specific questions.
Thanks for your advice! It's greatly received.
-
For me the one thing that will send it crashing and burning into flames is the spam issue.
No matter what common software you use spammers have written robots to crawl signup pages and create accounts. Some have written them so that they bypass those pages and directly post to the signup success pages avoiding many checks etc..
Do you very best to create a custom sign up process that cannot be easily filled in by a robot. Something totally unique to your site. Remove all signals of any software you may be using, logos specific html code that is easy to identify etc.. all these are things robots look for and they they NEVER stop hammering your site.
Its almost worth creating a custom build. As these xrumor link building schemes still work in Google. Others use them to build negative seo links. So basically your site will be used as a host for bad links. Go above and beyond to protect yourself.
Hope that helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Creating a new website, but I'd like to control it under a different domain.
I'd like to control it under the domain of another website with a higher DA. Can I create the new website (website A) and do an immediate re-direct to another website (website B)? Or would I be better at putting it as a subdomain? Such as www.websitea.websiteb.com? Cheers all, Rhys
Web Design | | SwanseaMedicine0 -
Does anyone know of an easy way to create jump links in WordPress without having to hardcode it into the HTML?
I am using Genesis Framework with the New Pro child theme on my site called Learn Internet Grow and when I create long articles I like to have a menu so readers can jump to a specific section. I wonder if there is a best practice for how to create jump links quickly without having to switch between the code editor and the post editor. There are a bunch of plugins but I am wary of adding more. Maybe if someone can tell me about one they had a good experience with. Ideally, a resource that shows you how to create a custom plugin for this or a non-plugin way to alter the framework to enable easy jump linking.
Web Design | | LearnInternetGrow0 -
How to create schema for medical specialties services
Hi, I have medical service website but my parent service is Plastic Surgery I need to add my various services in Plastic Surgery category like hair transplant, Rhinoplasty, Gynecomastia . how to create schema for this. Is http://www.productontology.org/ a good way to define my service like this? Hair transplantation
Web Design | | Aman_1230 -
CMS dynamicly created pages indexed?
Hey Moz'erz, Looking at the indexed pages of my clients eCommerce website I noticed that dynamically created pages are being indexed. For example this page does not "exist" but is created by a drop down filter menu that sorts by product tag: /collections/tools/TAG I can only conclude that this page got indexed either through a backlink or once upon a time there was an internal link pointing to this URL and got indexed (currently there is not). Are either of these cases possibilities? In either case before considering removal or any action I would of-course reference analytics to check for conversions, traffic and any backlinks for those "pages". I believe at the end of the day is recommend a drop down filer that doesn't create new pages as the best solution. Thoughts, comments and experience is greatly welcomed 🙂
Web Design | | paul-bold0 -
How to create this image effect for my home page
How do I make a wide, somewhat fast loading image effect like this home page has: 3dcart.com work on my website bobweikel.com I'm asking for how to create the effect (with small enough image kb to load) and what the image should be of in your opinion. Thanks!
Web Design | | BobGW0 -
SEO Searchable? Starting a New Forum for Company Community
Hi Mozzers, I'm new here and am looking forward to learning from this awesome group of SEOs As my company's Web Optimization Manager, I'm in charge of just about anything SEO related. We are an education company and we are looking to build a new forum so students (both new and old) and continue interacting within our community. We also want to use this as a tool for new users and potential new customers through search (obviously). We are in an internal debate as to how we should make the forums and the implications on search it may have. Some managers want the content available only to members, others want the content read-only to the public, and the tech team building the forum says that "it'll be an issue making the content available to the public without a log-in." So my questions are: (1) Will we still be searchable if we make our content "read-only" for non-members? Members will have the ability to log-in and comment and post etc (similar to this forum). (2) Will be searchable if we make the content completely private and available only to members. What I mean by private is perhaps, we'll make the title of the forum thread public but not the actual responses. Along these lines, what would happen if we made everything private (including the tite). Will Google still pick up on our content in a search result and a potential user only not be able to see anything? (3) What would you all suggest to make this flow the right way? Hope to hear from you all soon. Thanks
Web Design | | Pedram_SEO1 -
Creating infographics
Hello fellow mozzers! I wanted to ask the community if anyone knows of any software that would create an infographic (not just a basic bars and pie charts) or does it have to be designed and coded manually? Thank you! Igor EDIT Forgot to mention, that I was asking about interactive infographics, not just a static image (that I can do in illustrator) Is HTML5 or CSS the way to go?
Web Design | | igor.pinchevskiy0 -
SEO list for creating the *perfect* website
If you could build your website from scratch and have your developers do anything you want (within reason), what list of SEO requirements would you send them? Does anyone know of any good articles on the perfect SEO wish list? Happy Holidays!
Web Design | | MirandaP1