Search Engine Optimization

[Rodger25]

Edit: Removed by moderator.

[William Grim]

Well, now that the forums are no longer the main attraction, we only get spammers.  Perhaps it's time to shut down the forums?

[Admin]

I'm seriously considering and petitioning to have the forum moved back to the main page and to put the wordpress announcement bulletin under /blog or something when we next upgrade the caos forum.  I'm completely in agreement with you that the announcements don't get updated enough to be the main page.  I've got a few other priorities right now so it might be a while before the site gets redone, but I'm going to at least put your account back on as a moderator for the forum so that you can help to delete these spam posts when they do occur.  Thanks for your help Mike and for being one of the main contributors to this site.

gb

[LEDLight]

Admin-

just a friendly heads up - you may want to request this webmaster remove your site's link as a place for SEO spammers to get one way links from a .edu domain. Google tends to give more points for .gov and .edu domains. This link may explain why you are getting hit by spammers-

bosmol.com/2010/06/8156378000826190239.html

[William Grim]

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Greg!  I do hope the forums get placed as front page items again; the place was a lot more lively that way.

[Admin]

Thanks LEDLight for pointing that site out.  I found a setting that allowed guest users to view profiles and disabled it.  I'm surprised that that sort of thing was enabled by default.  Web-bots should no longer be able scan back-links in user profiles on this site.  I've also notified the admin of the site that you pointed out that this site could no longer be used in that way.  Much thanks -- you've certainly helped to reduce the amount of work that I've been having to do to delete all the spam accounts that we've been getting lately.

gb

[Mark Sands]

To be clear, we made the homepage to ensure students knew when meetings take place. see: http://imgur.com/3zGgL.png for a comparison of how it used to be, to how the current layout is. Related: http://warpspire.com/tipsresources/personal/whats-your-focus/

As far as I know, every meeting this past semester has been posted on the main page and is up to date.

[William Grim]

True that is the reason you did it.  However, in the past, we just made a special banner at the top of the forum home page.  It seemed to be just as effective, and the boards continued to maintain visitors.

[thatguy]

I think the banner with announcements AND an active forum > In your face announcements and an empty forum.

Let's be nerd scientists about this....

Do we have pre and post redesign data on forum visitors/posts/reads and attendance numbers from events?

We also need to set criteria.  Do we consider 25% higher attendance a success if it comes at a 75% reduction in posts?  What about a 10% increase in attendance versus a 25% reduction in posts?

To determine criteria we need to determine our focus, as pointed out by Mark's link.  So, is the focus of CAOS to have students meet in person to discuss things or is it the exchange of ideas, no matter the form that exchange takes?  Is a lecture on a programming language of greater benefit than an online discussion about the same language?

[Tangent Orchard]

A tad late, but I also have to agree with the previous above posts; I prefer having the forums be the front page rather than the announcements, especially when some announcements go up less than 24 hours before the event itself.  There's definitely been a drop in posts ever since that change was made.

[EagleEye]

I found a setting that allowed guest users to view profiles and disabled it

Yes, I think this must make the forum less attractive for spamers