Website Growth Question

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Akrion said:
Its a personal preference. I do believe that you have to use platforms for what they are best at and designed for. Forums are designed to be just that forums. They are fast and reliable bulletin boards. When people start asking the developers to make them capable of operating the NASA space shuttle you end up getting a bloated product or not well thought out one since its hard to change the foundations for the most part of any framework as far as software is concerned. I do think that the WP as a front page and xF/VB/(you name it) is the best for a big site (or a site that you want to get big eventually).

The model gives you the best of both worlds and the support of both communities when it comes to resolving issues. It also gives you the most flexibility. The hit you take is with integration but there are plenty of big sites (VERY BIG) which work using that model and are quite successful.

As I said its a personal preference. I know many will disagree and argue that the Forums software should park your car as well as cook breakfast in the mourning while walking your dog and making plans for your next vacation.
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ooohhh ok I gotcha. I am using XenPorta and XF. It's working very well.
 
Peggy said:
Is it a good idea - or not - to place adsense on a new forum?
I would only be placing this on my homepage to start.
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Hi Peggy :)

With my current project, a few days in to the Google Adsense scheme and no clicks but over a thousand impressions, I was very quickly denied further advertising with them.
I'm doubting it was clickbombed, because my stats showed no clicks a few hours before I had the "get lost" email from GA.
The subject had been done on a.n.other thread so, thought I'd keep this entry brief.
 
Well, I have ordered flyers for my site. Starting off with 100. I'm getting them done through Staples, and I should have a first draft to look at tomorrow.
What's funny is that I have an Ohio senator, our city's governor, the local newspaper and 2 of their reporters, 2 local tv stations, and several businesses, following me on twitter - but no posts to the site, except by me and one new member, lol.

I DO however, have permission from those 2 newspaper reporters to post their stories with the appropriate credits.

I'm trying to get links up around the net.

I can hardly wait to get those posters!
 
trilogy33 said:
Hi Peggy :)

With my current project, a few days in to the Google Adsense scheme and no clicks but over a thousand impressions, I was very quickly denied further advertising with them.
I'm doubting it was clickbombed, because my stats showed no clicks a few hours before I had the "get lost" email from GA.
The subject had been done on a.n.other thread so, thought I'd keep this entry brief.
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Thanks hun. I'm going to forego adsense on several recommendations from members here.
 
I finally got my flyers made. Took my idea to Staples and they helped me put it together. I have it up on a webpage for you to see, but it's a sorry copy, because my scanner isn't the best. The bottom part of the flyer is cut off because for some reason my scanner doesn't want to scan the entire page. There is actually a white border around the flyer, and the real flyer looks much better.

Anyhow, this is it, for now. Might do something a little more professional-looking later on.

The baseball pic is one I took at a Mahoning Valley Scrappers game. And the hockey pic I took at our Youngstown Phantoms hockey game.

http://mahoningvalleytalk.com/flyer.html
 
Sorry - I didn't read all answers but why not to ask from local companies some gifts and then you will ask people to help you build up new community and you make some awards system based on Trophies points - a'la first who will get 10 points will get dinner for 4 in some local restaurant, first who will get awarded as receiver for something (100 post, 100 likes) will get something bigger etc. And then you will spread word through your network and why not some FB ads (well targeted).

Very important is to keep in mind that awards must be attractive for these segments who you need in forum - for teenage chicks club tickets, for parents some kid related awards, for fresh couples some SPA weekend etc.

Best luck with forum!
 
Please do NOT ask me how I did this, because I couldn't answer if I knew. BUT, I somehow managed to delete the Facebook page for my website, lol! :rolleyes:

I'd like to make a regular profile for my site, but FB is telling me it can't be done, even though I have several businesses in my friends list on my regular profile.
Just trying to figure out how they got around it.....
 
Peggy said:
Thanks hun. I'm going to forego adsense on several recommendations from members here.
Click to expand...

Why would you not use AdSense? Everyone knows it's still the best paying affiliate program to use, and people who don't use it, generally don't because they've been banned by Google and have to look elsewhere.
 
Dark Matter said:
Why would you not use AdSense? Everyone knows it's still the best paying affiliate program to use, and people who don't use it, generally don't because they've been banned by Google and have to look elsewhere.
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Adding ads to a small local community (small sites in general should forego ads when beginning) turns away members; now if you get a relative active board you can play it off as needing financing for hosting and other things (y).
 
See if you can get a group together of at least 10 people who you personally know, and ask them to start posting on regular basis on the forum. Give them some higher status or something, more privileges etc. They will be the 'seed' that starts growing. Try other marketing stuff and post interesting articles about what's happening locally. Post information on things your readers have trouble finding somewhere else.

Basically that's how I started, but you will still need a bit of luck to really get it to higher gear. That's just how it goes.
 
Why am I reading so many people saying they got banned from AdSense because they put them on small forum. Had account with Google for over 5 years and used them on small sites before, never been banned. So something isn't quite right?

Are some of you not being completely honest here, maybe you clicked your own ads or did tricks to increase your ad impressions?
 
Dark Matter said:
Why am I reading so many people saying they got banned from AdSense because they put them on small forum. Had account with Google for over 5 years and used them on small sites before, never been banned. So something isn't quite right?

Are some of you not being completely honest here, maybe you clicked your own ads or did tricks to increase your ad impressions?
Click to expand...
If anyone (helpful members included) continually click ads multiple times a day they will ban your account if they view it as gaming their system.

Read around on other sites, its a common complaint :rolleyes:.
 
My site has been pretty much sitting idle, except for my own posts, for a while now. The only real activity I've ever had was when I joined Post Loop. Got alot of activity from that, but no one from Ohio.

I put out feelers on our MVT page on Facebook, and most answered that everyone is on FB and they have no desire to go to another site to discuss things. They even asked me to move discussions to our FB page.

I'm going to give my site til the first of the year, and if nothing happens by then, I'll most likely be closing down the site and moving content to our FB page. Given that there's an APP that you can add to the page that creates an area for discussions, I think that would be the best bet for now. I'll be keeping the domains, and IF user activity grows on the FB page, I may re-open the site sometime next year. Maybe.
 
Peggy, some feedback if I may (and you may well have tried some of these already)?
  1. When I open mahoningvalleytalk.com I get a Welcome message in the middle of the screen and the only obvious links in all of that text are "join" and "contact" - join what? contact you why? - is this all there is to your site? a Welcome message? What's interesting about that? [ Consider making the FORUMS the landing page ]
  2. When I do click on the forums the first thing I'm presented with is the Shoutbox - why? If there's not a great deal going on at the site, the shoutbox won't help the forums grown and will likely make it look like you're talking to yourself. [ Ditch the shoutbox (for now at least!!) ]
  3. After removing the shoutbox, make EVENTS the top-most forum in your forums list - the very first thing people see when the visit your site - because this is your leverage, your local knowledge, your "feed" that will keep people coming back to check-in regularly. You can post all about local events and get discussion going around them, around previous times the event/s have been held (or went well, or got cancelled, or funny things that happened), (historical background helping you here) and you can try to re-point the forums so that they become a resource for local events as an initial primary focus, and see if that helps to promote posting. [ Invite people to related experiences from past events and maybe even post photos too! ]
  4. Links - those sites you are linking to on your forums homepage, are they linking back to your site? [ Ask other local/state sites to link to you in exchange for a mention or rotating link on your homepage? ]
Just out of curiosity - what is the population of Mahoning Valley?

Oh, and maybe you could steal borrow some ideas from this forum - http://mahoningvalley.info/forum/

Cheers,
Shaun :D
 
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