Very much LOST

[tomatoman]

To be honest, after coming to this site and spending some time looking around I feel like someone with a Grade 2 education that just stumbled into a MENSA meeting.

At age 67, I'm no stranger to computers, the internet or on-line forums. However, as someone who would now like to start up a forum of his own, I have a ton of questions. I have no experience in running a forum other than acting as a Mod on one site. Therefore, all of the terminology used on this site is akin to trying to decipher a long, dead language. This is not to say that I am incapable of learning but I don't know where to begin.

I'd like to purchase the current version of the software with a view to putting my site together but I'm wondering just how steep the learning curve will be. In addition, I realize that buying the XF BETA version is simply a single step in the process of ending up on-line with my project. It would be nice if I had a much clearer understanding as to what the first step would be and then the steps that must follow to ultimately reach my goal. Of course, there is also the issue of initial costs as well as ongoing costs and once again, I have no clue about those either.Disclosure on that aspect would be most welcome too.

Perhaps I am asking a lot. I don't know. However, if I don't ask..... I'll never know...... so here I am.......looking for all the assistance that forum members and XF staff are willing to provide. I thank you for your anticipated assistance.

 

[Edrondol]

gardentractor, gardentractors, garden-tractor...you get the picture. They are all taken.

Elizabeth has a GREAT suggestion there, by the way.

 

[Puntocom]

Adwords are good because if you get traffic you can make a few bucks from advertising. Every little bit helps.

And Google Adsense & stuff like that are free. You pay nothing. So the price is right.

Also you can get data of search terms for free.

 

[Edrondol]

Also you can get data of search terms for free.

Right. But at this time it would not be necessary or cost effective of him to go AdWords. $5 to start, he'd have to design an ad & then pay for clicks. Maybe once he's established a bit he might think about it.

 

[HannahP]

I have heard some cases of looking for a domain and get it registered the next day if the domain is good enough.

Not exactly. What happens is the registrar puts a hold on the name you search (for 24 hours). That creates a scenario where you can only register the name through them. It will show up as unavailable if you search from another registrar or through whois on your server. Most registrars stopped that practice though, once Network Solutions caught hell for doing it earlier this year.

I don't think anyone is going to steal his tractor domains. I wouldn't worry too much about where you do a search for those.

 

[Edrondol]

Are you kidding? I'm squatting on them now! Only $1500 each if he wants them!

 

[tomatoman]

Suggestion: ccigardentractors.com I realize that initials aren't always wise but your market will know what the cci stands for and gardentractors was taken. Adding the names was way too long. Also, you can add the long names in your meta tags (that is what search engines look for when the read pages)

Yes. I'd have no problem with using the initials, as you suggest. I don't know what meta tags are at the moment. Are these something that I create during the process of registering a domain name? Or is it a separate procedure?

 

[Edrondol]

Meta tags are behind the scenes keywords that the search engines pull from your site and use in searches.

 

[AnthonyCea]

Find a .com domain like all the others are telling you.

 

[Puntocom]

Right. But at this time it would not be necessary or cost effective of him to go AdWords. $5 to start, he'd have to design an ad & then pay for clicks. Maybe once he's established a bit he might think about it.

It's not neccesary to pay to use the Keywords suggestion tools from Google Adwords. I have never paid for Google adwords and I use it to search for popular search terms, it's very useful to find good domain names!

 

[Elizabeth]

Yes. I'd have no problem with using the initials, as you suggest. I don't know what meta tags are at the moment. Are these something that I create during the process of registering a domain name? Or is it a separate procedure?

When you add your forum to the internet so people can actually see it is when you worry about meta tags. But it's what google, yahoo, bing and the other search engines look for when they search your site and then add it so others can find you.
After you register your domain, you will need a host, and one thing we will need to know is your budget...yes, I know that is personal information but we can't help too well unless we know about how much you can afford.

There are many levels of hosts but do not host with who you register your domain with, it's not a wise move.

 

[Edrondol]

It's not neccesary to pay to use the Keywords suggestion tools from Google Adwords. I have never paid for Google adwords and I use it to search for popular search terms, it's very useful to find good domain names!

Okay. I guess I've never looked too much into it. Every time I do it starts wanting me to pay for advertising so I surf away. Maybe I should be more patient.

 

[Decent60]

One thing about META Tags is that XenForo has a spot inside the admin control to place those keywords in at, so adding it isn't a huge hassle

 

[HannahP]

I don't know what meta tags are at the moment.

Description and keywords meta tags are no longer relevant as far as search engines are concerned, so don't worry about them.

You've got enough to learn without including a lot of unnecessary, outdated tweaking. Next they'll be telling you to stick with "web safe" colors and showing you how to do frames with FrontPage. Just buy a domain name, find a host and download an FTP program. You don't need to learn anything else. Seriously. You're talking to a bunch of people who have been doing this for years, and those kinds of people tend to get caught up in minutiae. Myself included, naturally.

What you need to do is approach it simply. Domain name, host, FTP. That should be your mantra, grasshopper. Let Charles Mingus be your guide, daddy-o; "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

 

[Elizabeth]

Next they'll be telling you to stick with "web safe" colors and showing you how to do frames with FrontPage. Just buy a domain name, find a host and download an FTP program. You don't need to learn anything else. Seriously. You're talking to a bunch of people who have been doing this for years, and those kinds of people tend to get caught up in minutiae. Myself included, naturally.

What you need to do is approach it simply. Domain name, host, FTP. That should be your mantra, grasshopper. Let Charles Mingus be your guide, daddy-o; "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

Since he is using XenForo, using FrontPage, esp since it isn't even made is an idiotic statement. I would suggest Notepad ++ but I don't think he's ready for that.

As to the FTP, I was gonna suggest WinSCP unless you consider that one outdated. I taught someone who had never used an ftp how to use that one in 5 mins.

And actually, the saying should be KISS Keep it Simple S (I use sweetie with my husband) but you can assume what you want...I suggest not that one.

 

[HannahP]

using FrontPage, esp since it isn't even made is an idiotic statement.

Elizabeth, baby, you've got to stop taking everything so literally. Have a glass of wine and relax, sweetheart. What time is it where you are? Never mind, just open the wine. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, right?

Come on now. Let's be friends. You and me could go far together. We could be a team like Butch and Sundance, or Flintstone and Rubble. Work with me here. Let's take this rocket ship to the Top of the Pops! You and me. Come on.

 

[tomatoman]

one thing we will need to know is your budget...yes, I know that is personal information but we can't help too well unless we know about how much you can afford.

There are many levels of hosts but do not host with who you register your domain with, it's not a wise move.

I think that you will agree with me that it takes time to build a forum. As I understand it, I am free to select a host initially that will cost me very little or even nothing at all when I initially go public with the forum and then move what I own to more expensive hosts as the forum traffic increases. I suppose that it will be necessary for me to be able to anticipate the exact moment when such a move is needed in order to keep the site running smoothly.

Budget is not a word that has surfaced with me so far because all I have to go on so far is what I read in the "Forum building for Dummies" tutorial Brogan directed me too. I know that some sites in the past required up-front payment for an annual membership but I don't know how successful those sites were. I also understand that one can allow companies to place ads on your site for a fee but I don't know how many members one needs before those firms will get on board. As I stated at the outset, making money is not my goal but breaking as close to even annually would be nice.

I would also be glad to take advice on whether I would be wise to purchase a dedicated computer with a back up hard drive to hold the finished XF forum site.

 

[Edrondol]

No. If you pick a good host you will have all the files there and they will back them up for you. How big do you think you'll get? If you are a small or medium sized board hosting space won't be a problem at all. It only gets into issues when you have a bigger board.

 

[tomatoman]

No. If you pick a good host you will have all the files there and they will back them up for you. How big do you think you'll get? If you are a small or medium sized board hosting space won't be a problem at all. It only gets into issues when you have a bigger board.

Dave,
Small, medium and large are all subjective terms as I'm sure you understand. To help you help me, perhaps I should do what I can to put some perspective on this subject. The Yahoo Case, Colt, Ingersoll forum dates back to 1999 and considered to be the most successful site for these marques. The current membership claims fewer than 6000 but on any given day, there are perhaps a max of 30 different post'ers making active use of the site. Another major site is My Tractor Forum that has grown to over 30,000 members but that place discusses tractors that range from lawn size to full blown farm tractors. In addition, there are a large number of additional forums that discuss all sorts of things. It grew so large that the original owner ended up selling it to a company that is now using it as a revenue generation tool.

The Yahoo forum likely sees 10 to 30 posts per day on the board. The MTF site may see double that on a good day but I've seen days when there might be only two posts.

Does that help explain things?

 

[Elizabeth]

Elizabeth, baby, you've got to stop taking everything so literally. Have a glass of wine and relax, sweetheart. What time is it where you are? Never mind, just open the wine. It's 5 o'clock somewhere, right?

Come on now. Let's be friends. You and me could go far together. We could be a team like Butch and Sundance, or Flintstone and Rubble. Work with me here. Let's take this rocket ship to the Top of the Pops! You and me. Come on.

I am relaxed...I just don't care for your style.

I think that you will agree with me that it takes time to build a forum. As I understand it, I am free to select a host initially that will cost me very little or even nothing at all when I initially go public with the forum and then move what I own to more expensive hosts as the forum traffic increases. I suppose that it will be necessary for me to be able to anticipate the exact moment when such a move is needed in order to keep the site running smoothly.

You are correct. I started on what is called shared hosting. That is where you pay very little (in relation to the other types) and have lots of people on the same server. I moved to a virtual private server which is a cross between the two. It acts like it's all your own but you are still sharing with others just not as many. I am now on a dedicated server where no one shares unless they are invited.

Budget is not a word that has surfaced with me so far because all I have to go on so far is what I read in the "Forum building for Dummies" tutorial Brogan directed me too. I know that some sites in the past required up-front payment for an annual membership but I don't know how successful those sites were. I also understand that one can allow companies to place ads on your site for a fee but I don't know how many members one needs before those firms will get on board. As I stated at the outset, making money is not my goal but breaking as close to even annually would be nice.

Don't pay yearly. It may cost more month to month but if your host screws you up, you are locked in. As for ads, usually that is just on free hosts and yes, they do exist.

I would also be glad to take advice on whether I would be wise to purchase a dedicated computer with a back up hard drive to hold the finished XF forum site.

just make a folder in your My Documents folder, it's not going to take that much room.

 

[Edrondol]

Sounds to me like you'd be on the smaller end of things if you are looking at 10-30 posts. But it's not really the number of daily posts (necessarily) but the amount of users on at any given time. I run about 70 users on at any time and I'm considered small/lower end medium. But I have to have a lot of bandwidth due to it being a highly modded board (arcade, daily game, etc.) that I don't see you needing. More than likely you could get on with a company that has a shared VPS and be perfectly fine. What that means is that you'd be sharing a server with other people and splitting the costs out with them.

Everyone else concur with that assessment?