Looks like a very nice place so far, with tons of room, and its on a corner lot so a bigger yard than most houses in that area. Already has a fence which is nice when we toy with the idea of getting a canine to guard our precious belongings.

I am happy to be where I am currently with F-Body Online (FBO).  While many others dwarf FBO, we’ve managed to carve out a spot in the camaro and firebird world with nothing but hard work.  I’ve not paid a single dollar in advertising, adwords, or anything of that sort for this forum.  I’m not boasting about that because if I did have the cash to throw at it, I probably would have given in and done it but it didn’t work out that way.

Because of the age of the forum and its size, it’s become a very tight-knit community with very little drama (that’s VERY rare on an automotive forum especially) and one of my biggest concerns is to make sure that everyone feels comfortable posting and asking questions.  Think about it- If you’re running a community based on users posting and interacting with others, being intimidated isn’t going to help you at all.  I’ve received dozens of messages and emails from users just letting me know that we’re one of the most helpful and respectful communities they’ve been a part of and that lets me know that what I’m working for is worth it.

I’ve got some very big plans in store for FBO in the very near future.  One of which I’ll give a little hint to here right now.

I’ve been quite busy working on a few projects I’m really excited about.  One of which is a Fantasy Sports game with a focus on long-term strategy and financing your athletes.  I wish I could say more on that front, but hopefully within a few weeks we’ll have a full launch.  We’re currently working on the design as well as some finishing statistics touches.  The plan as of now is to make this completely free, with the possibility of creating a even more realistic premium version later on down the road as it grows.

Another venture I’ve started is a Freelance Web Design site.  I’m currently working with another programmer and we compliment one another well with our strengths to help just about anyone.  With that I’ve started designing and coding some wordpress themes that I hope to start releasing within the next month or so.

That’s whats been going on as of recently, and I’ll keep updating on the status of the Fantasy Sports site.

I don’t want to give anything away, but it’s a sports fantasy game that works quite well and is very heavy on the strategy and management side of the sport.

I’ll be posting a full scope of this project soon, but if anyone is a Fantasy Sports fan and would like to beta test for me let me know.

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

First; Google has hinted several times that they’re trying to focus on tags with the direction the internet and search is heading, so even if you’re not currently using a tag cloud, or tag searches on your vBulletin site I think it might be worth the few extra seconds on each thread to add a few tags in case this becomes a solid search element in google and other search engines.

Second; Technorati.com and other blog/news sites already focus on tags when deciphering your data.

This is why I have began using tags, and I’m really not too worried about the whole duplicate content fuss, because tons of many others

I’ve known of sites “Longtails” for quite some time but it seems to be gaining popularity over the past half year or so. Just recently I was on vBSEO’s forums updating my reports on how well their content-friendly URL’s have been doing for me and I noticed quite a bit of talk about these Longtails.

Q: What are longtails?
A: Basically just a fancy way of looking at a ratio of your top keywords, compared to all of your keywords that have given you traffic. There are many different ways to figure out your LongTail, but it’s basically just making sure you aren’t targeting just a couple terms, but building a full index with many terms that are worth your time and effort.

Since there’s been a recent surge in interest of LongTails a friend directed me towards HitTail which is a site that has a script which shows you real-time (or close to it) searches, and the amount of hits you receive for each search term. This tool is free if you sign up and it is easy to install, just like Google Analytics and many other analytical app’s, just throw a small script at the bottom of your footer so it loads for each page and the info begins coming in. After you sign up you’ll be prompted to a screen that shows a couple paid options; just X out of that and log in with your free account.

This goes to show that even though it may take some time, if you’re passionate about a subject that is saturated, don’t let it completely dismiss your ideas and inspiration. This isn’t to say it will be easy, or that it will even succeed, but with a bit of work and determination it can be done.

On a side note; It’s been a while since I’ve updated here, but I’ll try to keep a more routine schedule now to keep the info flowing.

Some will say that the size ads I’m using, as well as the location is a bit “overwhelming”, but I haven’t had anyone complain yet, and registrations haven’t gone down at all in the week I’ve been using it so far.

Anyways, I’ve got 2 Adsense blocks below the navbar (for guests only of course). I’ve got them split to the left and right, with the left giving text ads, and the right image ads. Both ad blocks are 200x200px. Check the screenshot. I’ve also added a message above to let guests know that if they sign up, it removes the ads from their view. (Thanks to Brent Wilson for the help with setting up the ad location)

Heres a screenshot:

I’ll be working on moving all my links and modifications to the new theme for a while.