vBulletin SEO Setup

All serious webmasters have spent hours working on monetizing their vBulletin forums, making sure their AdSense ads are correctly positioned, colored, and filtered, and that their Search Engine Optimization is top-notch. But many leave small gaps in their monetization strategies; their AdSense ads might be showing too many public service announcements, for instance. Or members could be recommending books and movies from Amazon to each other without your affiliate ID getting in the links. Such things may not affect your bottom line very much each month, but over time, and with increased readership, these losses could add up. In these tough economic times, it’s worth taking a few minutes to plug these revenue holes.

Amazon

You don’t have to be actively pushing books, movies, and other items from Amazon to make a few bucks from it; sometimes your members will happily do it for you. You can use the Dynamic Amazon Links mod to insert your Amazon affiliate ID any time one of your members links to an Amazon page. Simply follow these steps:

• If you haven’t already, go sign up for an Amazon Associates account.
• Download Dynamic Amazon Links
• Edit the functions_amazon_links.php file to include your associates ID, then import vbulletin-plugins.xml via the Plugin Manager. The Dynamic Amazon Links plugin also works with Amazon.de and Amazon.ca.

There are other mods like Geek Auto-Linker that do much the same thing, but Dynamic Amazon Links is free and easy to implement. GAL has many other functions and can even format those Amazon links with product images, so if your members want to do book or movie reviews for each other that’s something you should consider.

Through the Eyes of the Color Blind

Did you know about 1% of all males have protanopia, the most common form of color blindness? If you’re getting 1000 men visiting your site each day, that’s 10 who may have trouble distinguishing your ad colors. Run your page through the [url=http://colorfilter.wickline.org/]Colorblind Web Page Filter[/url] to see if you have any trouble reading it.

Put Adsense Banners in your Archive

I’ve discovered that some of my overseas members actually prefer to browse in the archives; it loads faster and doesn’t have any distracting graphics. If I didn’t have my AdSense ads in the archive, they’d probably never see any ads at all. It’s very simple to implement, too. Download the mod at Put AdSense Banners in your Archive.

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Hello everyone. I wanted to take this time and tell how vbulletinsetup helped me and my forum to a successful start. I have always been a pretty good admin in my own right, but for some reason I always felt I was just one or two things away from a successful site. So I searched the web looking for information to help me with my new site idea. I have always wanted a site where you could freely speak your mind and argue. So I thought I had the extra money and I should go for it. So I opened Argue Crazy. But before I bust it open on the public I needed some knowledge to get me back in the game. I had not been an admin in a while and I felt that I needed to relearn all that I had forgot. So I searched all of the forums and I found vbulletin setup.

I joined the site in March of 08 and started reading and learning. They have so much valuable information here for you to read. And It took me about 2 weeks before I felt like I was ready to open my site and give it a try. So in April of 08 I opened Argue Crazy. And since then I have continued to seek advice and information from Brandon and his staff. And I must say it was tough at first, but from what I learned here I began to see some nice advancement in my site. And I have even made vbulletin setup sort of my home away from home.

But lets talk about the success I have achieved. I am not making tons of money. I am hardly even making any, but the site has begun to improve a lot in traffic. We have even, with the help of the nice people on this site, held a place on the first page of msn and breifly on google. We have been trying harder and harder to maintain those rankings. And as I currently type this we are on the first page of msn, and the second page of google, for out main keyword “argue”. And it finally feels like we have broken through the glass ceiling so to speak. We have amassed over 100 members and over 5000 posts. These are great milestones for our site.

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Every webmaster or webmaster-to-be has to start somewhere. If you want to start a forum, I highly recommend you use vBulletin (and no, I am not being payed to say that). If you are new to the world of webmastering and are using vBulletin, there are a few modifications -or hacks, as we call them- that you will probably want to add to your site. This is a list of 10 hacks that I use on my sites and I think are put to good use on almost any site. If you are a new vB owner and you have never installed a hack, installing these will give you a good idea of how this is done, and once you’ve learned how, you won’t have to pay people to do it for you.

DO NOT be afraid to mod your site. vBulletin owners have one of the best online communities for modifying (also known as modding) your site, it is called vbulletin.org. If you are a vB license holder you have access to thousands of hacks and great support. The following is a list of said hacks, good ones, if you come across problem it is best to ask in the “release thread” for help on the hack you are having a problem with. Now on to the list!

1 Welcome Headers

Welcome headers was a great hack when it first came out, and it still is to this day. A welcome header is text or an image you can show to guests or unregistered viewers only, to explain what your site is about, what features you offer, why they should sign up, etc., all in hope they will do just that: SIGN UP!

You can now make welcome headers with the notice system added to vB version 3.7 and higher, but the welcome header mod makes it very easy for you to set everything up without having to be a vB expert. Installation is fairly simple and takes you through editing templates (something you will want to learn) and installing products.

2 Display Unread Post and Rep Comments

Unread post and reputation comments is probably my most favorite hack ever. It is so simple yet so effective and convenient. Best of all it is a super easy install; download the file from the release thread, extract it on your PC, upload it in your products manager. Should take less them 5 minutes.

This hack will give you a handy count of how many unread posts you have waiting to be red as well as a new posts button and a indicator for showing if you get a new reputation point.

3 AE Multiple Login Detector

Alter Ego,multiple login detector. This is a good hack to have for every vb owner, inevitably you are going to have to reprimand someone, ban someone, etc. When that time comes you don’t want them back, and if they do want to come back and are smart enough they will use a different email address and probably a proxy ip to trick you. If they do that, and you have this installed you will still be able to catch them.

This is also good if you run a a referral contest to thwart cheating. Just make a sub-forum in your staff section, hidden from regular member, to put the automated notices in.

4 The Image Resizer

Another simple to install, great hack. Image Resizer will give you control of how wide linked pictures on your site are. If your members are like mine sometimes they will post big pictures. Anything over say 800px wide will make the thread and site look sloppy when displayed, this fixes that problem. Many, many, features to this mod…check it out.

5 Advanced Permissions Based on Post Count

This hack give you extra control over a myriad of things that user can do on your site. If you want a member to have 10 posts before they can download attachments, or 50 posts in order to private message people, etc, this is for you. Easy to install and a very handy tool to have in your bag of tricks for setting up special permissions, and adding security to your site.

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Hello again everyone. It has been a while since I had a time to post some things. But I am back with another one of those useful posts, at least I hope. Anyway, lets get to it.

So you made your website and you got it all ready to go, but now what? Well it is time to advertise. So how do you do it? Where do you go?

I have often found myself in the same delima. Should I go for the real word or the internet. So here are my thoughts on advertising in the real world.

Real word advertising

First lets look at the pros:

1. No limits(Unlike the internet, there are no limits on where you can advertise. In the net world if you always have to pay for optimal placement. In the real world, there are no laws on ambush advertising.)
2. Ambush advertising(This is a great tool in the business world. You can put ads anywhere or even if your crazy enough, places where they are not supposed to be at. This is a great advantage. I mean what can they do? Take your ad down, destroy it. But, it will be seen. Some, of the best ideas for this are; overpasses on busy highway, sides of buildings, street signs, crowded areas, college bulletin boards, flyers on cars, so on and so forth…)
3. Full control(You have full control in the placement of your advertisements. Even if they are taken down, before that you have full control over where to put them)
4. Word of mouth(In the real world trends travel fast. People see something they like and tell someone else. This is an advertisers dream.)

Ok now look at some of the cons:

1. If you advertise in the real world people have to go to a computer and type your site address in.(This is a huge disadvantage next to the internet where you can just click a link)
2. In the real world any type of advertisement is going to cost you money(Paper, radio, whatever your gonna have to shell out some change)
3. In the real world there is no way of stopping people you don’t want to see your ad.(You can throw up a robots.txt and keep stuff hidden from the bad bots. And works same way in real life, bad people will see your idea.)
4. You give competitors a visual target(This is very important in marketing and advertising. You never want to put a bad image out there about your product. If you advertise something thats not solid, someone will have a way to attack you.)
5. It is alot of work.(You cant copy and paste your ad everywhere. You have to get out there and put it where you want)

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