Pentax Forums is the largest forum dedicated to the Pentax Camera. As their forum hit 500,000 posts they wanted to add a new homepage to the site and we worked on this design. They wanted a simple and easy to navigate design that could tie into their forum, yet also stand apart from it at the same time.

Visit Pentax Forums

If anyone has any questions about vBSEO and are wondering if its worth the money.  Well the short answer is YES!

I’m just a regular guy, who researched a bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics, and then ran across vBSEO and thought it looked interesting but couldn’t get over the price.  About 5 months after my forum started I bit the bullet and bought the software for my Camaro & Firebird site.

I installed vBSEO on August 13th, 2007.  I’ve had some up and downs since then, but one thing that has never gone down during this time is search engine referrals (especially google).

Since I installed Google Analytics only 2 and a half months before the install of vBSEO I can understand why skeptics could be a bit turned off by the above graph.

However, this one gives real proof

When a Forum that is little over 1 year old and has only 700 members is ranking higher on almost all terms than forums with 10’s of thousands of members and 5+ years online, something is working well.

Sure, I’ve done other things to help my search engine rankings as everyone should.  No one states that vBSEO or any other SEO product is a magic install that just works and you can leave your site stagnant for 1 year and then blame them when it goes wrong.  However, I am no SEO Expert, just a guy who started a site online, read some free articles and watched some videos, talked with others and am now on the top of google (for a few terms-more will come with time).  I see the price tag of vBSEO now and wouldn’t think twice of buying a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th license if I had the forums that needed it.

I’ve noticed recently there has been a bit of a split down the middle of thoughts on Moderation of Communities.  On one side you’ve got people who like to have a laissez-faire approach, the other is very tight and rigid rules and guidelines.

I’m not here to tell you what is right or what is wrong for  your community.  I will however, express my opinion on both sides and how I feel about moderation, moderators and guidelines in online communities.

Obviously both sides have their strongpoints and basis for argument and reason.  The less strict communites believe that members should not be censored from saying most of what they’d like to say within reason, while the more strict communities believe that with a very extensive set of guidelines the users will get what their in their community for easier and in a much more presentable way.

Which side of the fence am I on?  Well I’m in the middle of course.  Noticing both sides positives and negatives it’s very hard for me to choose one so I have a moderate (how Ironic) moderation technique.  I believe that the need for guidelines is very important and without them a site can just be a drastic disaster but having too many could also make members timid and second guess everything they post.  This can make them feel awkward and become less involved or flat out leave your site.

My Positives and Negatives of Moderation:

Strict Positives:

• Ability to funnel discussion into specific niche areas
• Not many gray areas for moderators to make mistakes
• More targeted content in most cases

Strict Negatives:

• Users may feel lack of freedom
• Users may think the site has a lack of personality
• Timidness when attempting to post content

Lax Positives:

• More personable staff and community
• Users are more likely to “open up”
• More attractive to new members than a book of guidelines

Lax Negatives:

• Community can become off-topic
• harder for staff to determine infractions and fairness
• loss of etiquette/more user disagreements

I just recently purchased a book that should interest most (if not all) Forum Owners. The Book is “Managing Online Forums” by Patrick O’Keefe. Patrick is well versed in forums as he owns/manages more than I can probably count, runs the largest phpBB modification community (phpBBhacks.com) and is the owner of the iFroggy network. Anyways, on to the book…

I’m not a big bookworm to be honest (not at all really) but this book caught my attention as I haven’t seen anything like it yet. I sat down with it at Barnes and Noble to see if I thought it’d be worth the time and money in buying and reading it. I was impressed at the detail that Patrick goes into for just about everything you need to know to own and manage a forum.
The book details many of the tough topics such as moderation, problem users, guidelines, and much more. Patrick gives many of his real-life examples and tips he’s gained through almost a decade of forum management. You’re most likely not going to agree with Patrick on all of his issues, but he explains his reasoning and tactics so that you can at least see and decide what will work for your and your community.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through the book as of right now and enjoy the read so far. I definitely suggest any Administrator gets this, or at least gives it a try. It’s got something for just about any level administrator-whether you’re still brainstorming a community you’d like to grow, or already have a booming forum.

I’ll update this as I finish the book.