Forum overhaul

[Lawrence]

I've spent the last couple of days giving the forum a complete overhaul. The first thing that was done was to move it to a dedicated server which not only increases performance but vastly improves system security as we are no longer sharing resources with other sites.

The other changes have been to the site's SEO, these changes have affected almost every part of the site from the structure of the URLs used on each page to the way each page links to each other within the site. The changes will be more noticeable when viewing the forum as a guest than when logged in as the search bots will always visit the site as guests not members so the changes have been designed to target them. There have been many other changes to the forum's SEO, most of which are behind the scenes and are unlikely to be noticed.

A few new features have been applied to the site, namely the addition of social bookmarking links on each post and pingback, trackback & ref back functionality. If you see a post/thread that you consider worthy of a wider audience then please use these features to increase it's visibility. Not only will you be increasing this site's visibility on the net, but if you have posted on the same thread and have a link in your sig to your own store then you will be exposing your own site to a much larger section of the online community too. A blog was installed a short while ago too. If you have something to say that deserves more longevity than the average forum post then blog it, search engines love blogs and they are very easy to syndicate to other sites so they are excellent tools for spreading your own store's link around.

Apart from a minor hiccup with being unable to upload avatars and other forum images for a few hours everything seems to be working fine. If you experience any difficulties then you know where to find me.

[dezina]

Thanks for all your hard work Lawrence...
query.. those 2 little yellow stars under your name..
what do they signify?

[Lawrence]

Why have I got two yellow stars? That's because I'm special.

The stars are a representation of your post count. It's a feature of the forum I activated a few weeks ago, though I may change the settings for them or possibly remove them completely sometime in the future.

[dezina]

I know u r special.. stars good idea tho'

Did not get email regarding your reply to my post..
maybe might want to check this out as you have moved
servers...

[Lawrence]

I've been getting my emails and we've had a few registrations since I swapped servers which cannot be activated without email confirmation so emails are being sent ok.

Have you checked your spam settings as your spam filter might not like the new server?

Hopefully, you'll get this post by email and the problem will be resolved.

BTW sorry for the server downtime everyone, NewNet were having problems with their routers and diverting requests for the forum elsewhere.

[dezina]

Sorted.. google mail placing all messages from eshopforums into
spam...no idea why.. did not tell it too

[Tinkerbell]

you have one star dezina you will have to do some catching up

[dezina]

Originally Posted by Tinkerbell

you have one star dezina you will have to do some catching up

Quality not quantity more important me thinks