I'm looking for some ideas.

[[BL] Johnny]

Hey I just started a forum a couple of days ago, it's a forum for the game Counter-strike Source.

This is the ideas I have so far:
- VIP Membership
- Clan section
- Arcade?!?!

If you know anymore ideas that would be good please let me know.

 

[Fergal]

I'd suggest moving the forum to the http://www.css-forums.net/ domain so that people don't have to click on the logo to enter the forums. Anything that helps your members will be good for your site. Moving the forum to the main page might also help your SEO.

If you don't want to move the forum to your site homepage I'd suggest trying to include some dynamic info on the home page. Maybe something like you see at http://foot.ie/ .

I associate CSS with Cascading Style Sheets in web design. I'm not sure if that might be an issue for your forum name.

Good luck with it.

 

[Cosmic]

I agree with what Fergal said. CSS might make some misconceptions and those pages with just an image link on them are bad for both search engines and users. As google places more importance on your index and less importance on pages further in, I believe, it will only serve to make your forum less important to search engines and won't give you that m,any keywords.

 

[posey]

I agree with what Fergal said. CSS might make some misconceptions and those pages with just an image link on them are bad for both search engines and users. As google places more importance on your index and less importance on pages further in, I believe, it will only serve to make your forum less important to search engines and won't give you that m,any keywords.

That's not true, if you google things it are almost always topics that are found, rather than just the board index. This is because when viewing a topic you have tons of keywords (global, forum, topic keywords) while on the board index you just have global keywords.

As mentioned earlier, you will have to make sure to make clear to everyone that you're a counterstrike community and not a designing community.

An arcade is a good idea, as it's a gaming community. Playing small games and funny games should appeal to gamers.

A gallery would also be a good addition I believe, so users can quickly post their screenshots of their scores. Instead of just posting them through out the board.

Cheers,

 

[Fergal]

...if you google things it are almost always topics that are found, rather than just the board index..

That is absolutely true for long tail keywords. However it may not be true for shorter more competitive keywords. For example if you Google "forum promotion" or "free advertising forum" the search listings for FP link directly to forumpromotion.net, not to any topic. If you Google for "business advice forum" you will see that most of the results listed link to the relevant forum's home page.

 

[posey]

Thank you for sharing that, never realized that. Learning all the way.. Luckily I have my forum on my main page and installed in the public_html folder, so I'm fine.

However, topics are the most things that are found in the end. As it contains a lot more keywords.

 

[[BL] Johnny]

Well thanks, If you know any good gallery mods please send me a link posey.

And can I just move the forum to my public html? or will it hurt my forum`?

 

[posey]

Well, you can but you will have to make some adjustments to your settings I believe. Will have to take a look through the ACP to find all path related settings.

As for the Gallery MOD:
phpBB Gallery (nickvergessen): http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &t=1825475

Cheers,

 

[posey]

Oke, as for the path settings you might have to adjust are the following:

General Tab » Cookie Settings » Cookie Domain
General Tab » Server Settings » Domain Name

All other paths are relative to the root of your phpBB Install, which will be moved aswell if you move the forum completely.

Do realise, if you're going to move your forum and it didn't work out, it's not my fault. I'm just trying to help and have not done this myself ever before..

 

[[BL] Johnny]

ok, I'll try to copy all the files.

 

[posey]

Make sure to have a back up of everything, in case it goes wrong. Then you can 'simply' restore everything to how it was!

 

[[BL] Johnny]

Hey posey, I have no changed my host aswell, it should be showing up in the public_html folder soon.

 

[posey]

Oke, awesome! Glad it's working out for you.

If it's in your public_html folder, it means that as soon as you go to just your domain name, you will be on your forum.

Cheers,