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 -
Facebook is now only allowing owners of FB pages (not admins) to create keys for a WP blog post syndication. Is there a way around this?
I hired a contractor to configure a WP plugin to syndicate FB, G+, Twitter and standard WP posts. He is using NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster. He came back to me saying that FB is now only allowing direct owners (not admins) of FB pages to create keys. This means I have to give my client's personal FB access to a third party contractor. I'm not comfortable asking my client to do this. Does anybody know of a way around this? Is there a way to create a FB key with just admin access? Thanks
Web Design | | RosemaryB0 -
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 -
Requirements for mobile menu design have created a duplicated menu in the text/cache view.
Hi, Upon checking the text cache view of our home page, I noticed the main menu has been duplicated. Please see: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.trinitypower.com&strip=1 Our coder tells me he created one version for the desktop and one for the mobile version. Duplicating the menu cannot be good for on page SEO. With that said, I have had no warnings reported back from Moz. Maybe the moz bots are not tuned to looks for such a duplication error. Anyway, the reason the coder created a different menu for mobile in order to support the design requirements. I did not like the look and feel of the responsive version created based on the desktop version. Hi solution to this problem is to convert the Mobile version menu into ajax. what do you guys think? Thanks, Jarrett
Web Design | | TrinityPower0 -
Anyone with Forums experience + adsense
An opportunity has been presented to me to be able to host a forum for a semi popular celebrity. Very excited about that 🙂 I have never had a very forum and would like to know what kinds of experienced has anyone had with a popular forum From what I hear if you can have a popular forum its pretty much a cash cow (adsense) especially if its reputable and is a great long term thing, because of returning visitors and the loyalty you establish with the users. Anyone in this boat who can shed some light for me? What should I expect? Best software/themes for this for user-ability as well as adsense?
Web Design | | cbielich0 -
Should I create a microsite or will 301 be sufficient?
We have a client http://www.shedfinders.com/, new site and we are slowly building DA & PA for. However they have another domain industrialpropertyscotland (one of the keywords they want to rank for) Should we create a little microsite attached to the main site - Say "Your guide to buying industrial property in Scotland" or should we just stick to a 301 redirect and keep working on the main Shedfinders site? Thanks, Laura
Web Design | | lauratagdigital0 -
Creating Print Catalog From Ecommerce Product Database
I have seen some kind of free online software that lets you create product catalog layouts based on your ecommerce product database but I can't remember the name of company or the url of their site? Anyone heard of this?
Web Design | | larahill1 -
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