Sorry about the downtime
- Thread starter Mike
- Start date
dovehunter79
New Member
The forum has been down a couple times in the last 24 hours and I apologize for it. We were looking at an optimization script that not only wouldn't perform as promised, but also 'broke' the forums.
Everything is back to normal and we're moving forward again.
Mike, as always, your dedication is always appreciated!!!
Mike
Well-Known Member
I think the forums were closed for a total of around five hours, whilst I was trying to get that SEO script to work properly. And I never managed to succeed.
I found a free script, that actually has more options, allowed me to configure URLs the way I wanted and required all of 17 minutes to install and configure. Without having to close the site down at all.
Now, we're really in high gear. :thumb:
Telman2
Active Member
Not a problem Mike, I'm an admin on other forums and know that sometimes the best of intentions can bite you in the butt. Considering you were able to move the forum to another format without losing a post or crashing it is a real accomplishment. I've been involved with vBulletin for years and was really needlessly concerned about what the new forum would be like. I love the new look and simplicity of the forum and though my contribution is meager I will continue to support it for as long as I can.
one finger john
Active Member
Mike, everythings good, no need to apologise. I will go on record as saying that the "smiley" committing suicide is really bad form.
John
John
Mike
Well-Known Member
OK, I finally have two minutes time to spare here (hmmmm, I wonder what I am forgetting), so I can explain what the downtime was all about and what I was trying to accomplish.
We had a piece of software on the vBulletin forums that really helped us improve our rankings on the various search engines' results pages. It performed many operations, but some of the most important were to insert the title of a thread (or topic, as they are known in IP.Board) into the URL of the page, to specify what version of the page should be the version indexed by the search engines and to make the URL one that would be more friendly to the search engines.
The script really helped us and as I was examining the possibility of converting to IP.Board, the idea of leaving that SEO script behind was something that had me worried. I didn't want to end up losing all the advantage we had gained over 24+ months of using the script.
Fortunately, I managed to locate a couple options to accomplish the same ends in the IP.Board format. One of them was an absolute pain in the tail and I never could get it configured to work properly. I finally gave up struggling with it and started looking at the second script. The second was easier to work with, in respect to setting up the exact URL structure I wanted to use. It took about 30 minutes to configure the URLs and from that point it took another few minutes to install the script and finish the set-up.
If you look at the attachment, you will see the title of that particular page becomes the title of the page, the keywords from the thread title are inserted into the URL and the thread title is also pushed into the navigation breadcrumb, which is a feature IP.Board doesn't offer for whatever reason. That particular thread isn't necessarily one that has anything to do with T-Buckets, but the threads that do will have keywords used in the URL and title to help people search for them. The keywords are particularly friendly for we humans, but the reconfiguring of the URL also eliminates some additional file extensions that will help us down the road with the search engines.
Another benefit that comes in handy is the addition of the social network bookmarking menu. I suspect some of you are using some of the social networks to interact with friends and family, so you will know what the bookmarks are about. For others, the social networks are actually very simple but very powerful ways to not only locate people, but also to communicate with them. I use Facebook a bit, but if I am online I almost always have TweetDeck running to keep track of the people I follow on Twitter.
You can see in the above attachment some of the columns in TweetDeck. The far left column is people I follow on a personal account, the next is a column displaying people I follow on a political activism account, the next is a column showing tweets where people have mentioned my personal account and the last is a column displaying tweets people have tagged for IP.Board. It lets me interact with people in real-time, without needing to send e-mails or private messages. I run TweetDeck minimized and whenever new tweets are posted, it displays notifications in the top right corner of my monitor. When the notification pops up, I can glance up to see if it something I want to read or reply to and if not I can go right back to what I was doing.
I also use Twitter to help attract traffic to this site. As you can see in the above image, I use TwitterFeed to read the RSS feed from the forums and to post new tweets to Twitter whenever a new thread is started here. And the tweet contains a link to the thread here. Generally, within just two minutes of a tweet from the forums appearing on Twitter, as many as 25-30 guests and search engine spiders hit this site.
So if you happen to run across a topic that you think others might enjoy within your own social networking circles, just click on the bookmarks widget and you will be able to insert whatever bookmark you want to use. You're pointing your friends to pertinent threads they might enjoy and you are also attracting more visitors to the site. More visitors means more members and growing the forum is what we're all about. So help us out whenever you can.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I am slowly getting over a nasty case of pneumonia, so I am quarantined from enjoying the holiday with others. A bit of a disappointment, but at least I'm feeling a bit better and I am very thankful for that. Have an extra serving for me today! :hooray:
We had a piece of software on the vBulletin forums that really helped us improve our rankings on the various search engines' results pages. It performed many operations, but some of the most important were to insert the title of a thread (or topic, as they are known in IP.Board) into the URL of the page, to specify what version of the page should be the version indexed by the search engines and to make the URL one that would be more friendly to the search engines.
The script really helped us and as I was examining the possibility of converting to IP.Board, the idea of leaving that SEO script behind was something that had me worried. I didn't want to end up losing all the advantage we had gained over 24+ months of using the script.
Fortunately, I managed to locate a couple options to accomplish the same ends in the IP.Board format. One of them was an absolute pain in the tail and I never could get it configured to work properly. I finally gave up struggling with it and started looking at the second script. The second was easier to work with, in respect to setting up the exact URL structure I wanted to use. It took about 30 minutes to configure the URLs and from that point it took another few minutes to install the script and finish the set-up.
If you look at the attachment, you will see the title of that particular page becomes the title of the page, the keywords from the thread title are inserted into the URL and the thread title is also pushed into the navigation breadcrumb, which is a feature IP.Board doesn't offer for whatever reason. That particular thread isn't necessarily one that has anything to do with T-Buckets, but the threads that do will have keywords used in the URL and title to help people search for them. The keywords are particularly friendly for we humans, but the reconfiguring of the URL also eliminates some additional file extensions that will help us down the road with the search engines.
Another benefit that comes in handy is the addition of the social network bookmarking menu. I suspect some of you are using some of the social networks to interact with friends and family, so you will know what the bookmarks are about. For others, the social networks are actually very simple but very powerful ways to not only locate people, but also to communicate with them. I use Facebook a bit, but if I am online I almost always have TweetDeck running to keep track of the people I follow on Twitter.
You can see in the above attachment some of the columns in TweetDeck. The far left column is people I follow on a personal account, the next is a column displaying people I follow on a political activism account, the next is a column showing tweets where people have mentioned my personal account and the last is a column displaying tweets people have tagged for IP.Board. It lets me interact with people in real-time, without needing to send e-mails or private messages. I run TweetDeck minimized and whenever new tweets are posted, it displays notifications in the top right corner of my monitor. When the notification pops up, I can glance up to see if it something I want to read or reply to and if not I can go right back to what I was doing.
I also use Twitter to help attract traffic to this site. As you can see in the above image, I use TwitterFeed to read the RSS feed from the forums and to post new tweets to Twitter whenever a new thread is started here. And the tweet contains a link to the thread here. Generally, within just two minutes of a tweet from the forums appearing on Twitter, as many as 25-30 guests and search engine spiders hit this site.
So if you happen to run across a topic that you think others might enjoy within your own social networking circles, just click on the bookmarks widget and you will be able to insert whatever bookmark you want to use. You're pointing your friends to pertinent threads they might enjoy and you are also attracting more visitors to the site. More visitors means more members and growing the forum is what we're all about. So help us out whenever you can.
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I am slowly getting over a nasty case of pneumonia, so I am quarantined from enjoying the holiday with others. A bit of a disappointment, but at least I'm feeling a bit better and I am very thankful for that. Have an extra serving for me today! :hooray:
Mike
Well-Known Member
If anyone has had difficulty accessing the My Settings portion of your account, the issue has been fixed. That's one of those issues I really wish I could blame on someone else, but I created the problem. :hooray:
Here's a quick tutorial for some of you to improve the text entry procedure (which is how I discovered the issue in the first place). Anyway, check these settings - ONLY if you are NOT BLOCKING Javascript. If you are blocking Javascript within your browser, this tip will not work.
Here's a quick tutorial for some of you to improve the text entry procedure (which is how I discovered the issue in the first place). Anyway, check these settings - ONLY if you are NOT BLOCKING Javascript. If you are blocking Javascript within your browser, this tip will not work.
- In the top right corner, next to your username is a down arrow. Click that arrow.
- Now click on My Settings.
- If the Settings tab is not selected already, select it now.
- Be sure the General Settings option is selected.
- Scroll down to Posting Settings.
- If the box next to Enable visual (RTE) editor is not tick, tick it now.
- Click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the page.
