Community managers who are exceptional at their tasks will be able to maintain a community of active users, update & upgrade forum software, dive into code when required to either fix errors or implement a new feature, be active both on and off the forum to upkeep an online presence, and be able to deal with any given situation thrown at them. Big companies and websites are beginning to enter the realm of forums (some have been for a while) as they witness the benefits on allowing their targeted audience to discuss and network on a feature rich platform.

Some communities that are generating revenue through affiliate marketing; advertising, subscriptions and other fund making options are providing members of staff with micro-wages to help with the amount of time an can dedicate to a bulletin board. Why shouldn’t they be paid? If a company, website, or forum generates enough revenue to cover hosting costs, miscellaneous purchases and more, why can’t administrators/community managers earn a few quid in the process?

You could take a video game developer as an example.  They have just launched a forum attached to their website, running on a piece of software you’re familiar with, and are looking for a community manager to run the show. This sounds like a full time job – it is. A position running a community is no different from any other in terms of importance, one could even argue that in this example, a community manager is a more responsible role due to interaction with customers being a top priority.

I would have to have an e-argument with someone who would say “anyone can run a forum, an employee from that company could carry out all the required tasks”, which is true to some extent. What happens to the employee’s current role? Administrating a large forum can be extremely time consuming, plus (s)he would need to learn the ways of the force, the ins and outs of the software, how to successfully update it via the FTP protocol, and deal with situations that may arise. It’s best to outsource this to a worthy candidate, should a community team not be present. The description of this open position would more than likely list the following requirements/responsibilities that will be expected from the successful applicant:

• Manage and maintain a healthy, active community.
• Engage with customers on behalf of the company.
• Update, administrate and back up the forum when necessary.
• Lead a team of moderators and ensure they carry out tasks.
• Keep discussion generation at a satisfactory level.
• Work closely with the community team for news, information etc. to be published.

At the end of the day, the responsibilities listed above are known perks of the position of running a forum so they would come as no surprise to an experienced individual (as it is with any profession with their skills/knowledge). I know if I were to be offered a paid position to run a forum for a company, I wouldn’t turn it down. A nice side earner for some of my time.

Photo courtesy of dinazina.

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

Before this takes effect, we will need to kill Finder and have it restart. To carry out this operation, simply enter the following into your Terminal window:

killall Finder

This will re-open all Finder windows and display all the hidden folders & files that you weren’t able to see beforehand. This is great for temporary use, I wouldn’t recommend it as a permanent change due to the sheer volume of files (and folders) created by the operating system that can clog up browsing (unless you enjoy jumping onto the command line train to “cd” around). To turn off the availability to view hidden files and folders, simply follow the exact same steps as you carried out to view them, but change “TRUE” to “FALSE”. Simples?

Your first line of defence is the URL for any given web page (domain or section) you are attempting to visit. If it is a link within a block of text, highlight it. Should it be visible already, take a closer look at it (especially in emails). When you look at a URL it is normally easy to pick out genuine from fake. Check out the below example.

http://www.paypal.securepayus.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_enter_account

https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_contact_us

I bet you can easily spot the difference, it is a terrible example but you get the idea. Hundreds of email users fall for these scams or visit web pages they thought were to be real, but weren’t. A wide range of problems occur from viruses being downloaded, spy-ware infecting the operating system, or even your bank account details being copied – all without you noticing a thing.

WOT rating pop-up

While WOT can’t protect us with our emailing, the service provided helps web surfers stay on the legitimate side of the Internet and makes visiting questionable websites much harder. The addon itself (available for Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari) is a lightweight icon, which displays a small ring on your browser tool bar. This ring changes colour determined by the overall rating of the website you are visiting. Dark green is a excellent rating, green is a good rating, yellow is questionable, orange is caution and red is bad.

All the ratings that are in the system are community provided and are provided by web surfers such as you and I. As well as ratings being set, you can also leave comments on website profiles (check mine out) on the WOT website to further explain how your experience was.

Clicking on this icon whenever it is shown will pop up the WOT scorecard. This will show the rating the WOT community has averaged and how many people have rated. The bars on the right hand side are your sliders to rate how you feel the website should be seen within the categories provided. More information is then displayed and links are provided to the websites page, your profile and more. As a service powered around safety, what protection does the WOT addon provide when visiting a poorly rated website? Only the best of course!

The service prevents you from entering any website (or sub domain etc.) that has a bad rating, you can then either click “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!” or “I’m a hard nut, let me in” – the latter only to be used if you are triple sure the website is legitimate. This is the main protection I have against any problems many folk encounter online and it hasn’t failed me since I first began using it nearly four years ago.

It’s completely free, takes minutes to install, allows you to help others by rating websites quickly, and can save you hours of problems, days of virus scanning and possible thousands of pounds. Give it a try and see what you think, you wont look back.

Basic Understanding Of Clans

To begin, you need to grasp what a gaming clan actually is, what it involves, how it is created (and managed), what happens day to day and how to recruit members. Online gaming guilds/clans/communities (which ever you prefer to choose, RuneScape normally go with clans) started with gaming over the Internet, it wasn’t introduced in RuneScape, nor is it part of the game itself. The main idea for these uprising gangs of people at keyboards was to come together to enhance their enjoyment and experience of that covered game, while participating in events, going all out against other erected clans and create a name for each other.

That being said, the same principle and reasons behind today’s RuneScape clans are exactly the same. Let’s start this off at a nice, steady pace with a few points to consider:

• Time: You need to make sure you have enough time on your hands to dedicate to your clan, also consider time zones.
• Communication: What will your clan use to communicate? The in-game Clan Chat is almost useless, possible VoIP solution?
• Hierarchy: Careful consideration is required in deciding how your clan ranks will be structured.
• Members: You need to have an application, requirements, maybe even a trial to ensure all your recruits are the best.
• Events: What will you guys do? Clan events will need to be organized to daily, weekly and monthly occurrences.
• Location: Where will your home be? You may need to consider a website, meeting place in-game and other geographic possibilities.

RuneScape itself doesn’t have the best clan features available, but they are in the process of fixing this. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I really do think there needs to be greater clan management, maybe even built in VoIP functionality and other basic features that other games already implement (which is a big downside of RuneScape in my opinion). However, there are many events that your clan can do once created, these can include the following:

• Castle Wars
• Clan Wars
• Revenant Hunting
• King Black Dragon Slaying
• Barbarian Assault
• Pest Control
• PvP/Bounty Hunter
• House Party
• Skill Grinding
• TzHaar Fight Pit
• Kalphite Queen Hunting

Planning

First step on your clan creating journey is to figure out what on Earth you are going to do! This huge task isn’t one to go rushing into, nor is it to start right away without thinking about the sacrifices you will be making: for example, you will have a lot less time for your own needs, you really do need to have a steady income of gold. You need to strongly consider the serious time dedicated your clan will need. To begin planning, have a look around my blog, some other RuneScape blogs, help sites, fan sites and maybe some articles on clans to really get a good, solid background on RuneScape clans themselves.

With this powerful (hopefully) bank of knowledge, you will now be able to fully plan your future excellent clan. To begin with, you will need a name. What is a clan without a name right? Think carefully about this as it isn’t often that clans go and change their name out of the blue, so make sure it’s something that hasn’t been taken, is unique to your clan and is likeable.

Next you will need to consider what your goals will be, what requirements you need to have in place for recruitment, how you will recruit, what your clan will do, where your clan will meet, whether or not you have VoIP or not and many other factors.

Creation

The clan will not be anywhere without actually being created, get your Clan Chat set up for your clan with the Clan name and settings on who can enter the chat, who can moderate etc. The actual chat is very limited (features listed below the screen shot) and takes away time when typing to other team members, which is why I always vote for VoIP alongside the Clan Chat for increased effectiveness (this of course can be a slight downturn as your players will need microphones to chat). With the Clan Chat as set up and ready to go it is time to get a forum thread created on the official RuneScape forums, this will bring a lot of attention to your clan and may act as the best way to recruit.

The forum thread will need to contain basic clan information, such as:

• What the clan is about?
• Any clan rules for member to follow?
• What events are planned?
• What is the current member list?
• How do you go about joining?
• What are current relations with other clans?

This will give visitors to your thread a view of what your clan background is, what your clan is aiming to achieve and if it is the right choice for them. With the thread created, you will need to get your own forum/site created, there are plenty free forum hosts and clan sites available for you to choose from. If the clan begins to grow in reputation, you might consider a paid hosting option with a YOURCLANNAME.com domain.

With the CC, forums and the official thread created, it’s time to start inviting some friends off your buddy list!

Here is a nice little run through of the settings in the above Clan Chat window:

• Clan Name: Pretty much self-explanatory.
• Who can enter chat: Set this to the lowest rank that is allowed to enter the Clan Chat.
• Who can talk on chat: Set this to the lowest rank that is allowed to type in the Clan Chat.
• Who can kick on chat: Set this to the lowest rank to have moderation ability to kick players from Clan Chat.
• Who can share loot: Set this to the lowest rank who can get in with the loot sharing of the clan.

Jagex don’t give Clan Leaders a lot of features to play with, but the basics are there for you to make a name for your clan and get it up and running. I can see this changing in the future however, due to the increase number in guilds/clans throughout the MMORPG world, and RuneScape itself.

Recruitment

This is a really fun part of running your clan, you now have it set up but you are missing something right? Of course you are! you are the only one logged into Clan Chat, you have no one else on your member list and your own forum looks bare, you need members! Good thing about this part is that there are a number of ways of going about recruitment, some as follows:

• Official Forums: Invite players on their ‘clan seeking’ threads, also make sure your clan thread is bumped to the top of the list to ensure maximum traffic potential.
• Announcements: You can announce your clan is recruiting in game around busy areas such as the Grand Exchange. Make sure you don’t annoy people by spamming the chat, you don’t want to seem desperate, do you?
• Making Friends: This is one of the easier options, befriend others that have similar interests as you, want a stable and mature clan. These will most likely be the more committed members.
• Advertise your site/forum: Run around to other RuneScape blogs, sites and general advertising forums to promote your clan, don’t spam other sites though, you want a clean record.

If possible, try aim for the Players that seem like decent players, but not too high levelled. You need to have respect in the clan and recruiting players that are way better than you skill wise isn’t recommended unless you know them well. With some recruitment going on, you should have around 10+ members through using some means of getting noticed. Make sure to assign recruiters or have a recruitment day for your clan to participate in per longing the lifespan.

Management

With your clan being fully set up and having a good number of members, it’s time to arrange events, start clan wars and more to really keep the general interest in the clan high. You need to remain active whenever possible and sacrifice your personal gaming time to contribute to the clan. Some players will need to be kicked, others promoted, this comes with the job on being the Leader, which can be fun or stressful.

You will need to make sure your clan thread on the official forums is updated and bumped regularly, you should also make it stated that your clan members should visit and post on the thread every now and then. As for your own site/forums, these will need to be maintained with updates and moderation.

Enjoyment

Now you can sit back and enjoy the clan, make sure you enjoy the events as much as your members. Remember to take a few hours per week away from your clan if you feel that you are loosing interest slightly. That is about it on this short, detailed guide on creating your own RuneScape clan (you can actually take some of this advice onto other platforms!), I hope you create long-lasting, popular gaming communities!

Be sure to ocmment with a link to your clan or if this guide has helped you, to know that I can help others learn about how to create the perfect RuneScape clan is a reward in itself.

You can add a calendar within Thunderbird, using the Lightning extension (I recommend this over using Sunbird personally) via a URL, which is great if you use Google Calendar or other services. If you are using exchange, you can’t use a direct URL to a calendar, which is located on someone’s account. Instead you will have to follow a work around to implement read and write access to an exchange calendar, which is always a pain when things just don’t “work” out the box.

Installing Lightning extension

First off we will need to download the Lightning extension .xpi (basically all addons that you use within Firefox, Thunderbird etc., any Mozilla application that allows addons will use .xpi files) and save it nicely to your hard drive. Make sure your Thunderbird installation is past 3.1 as the exchange extension will only work with the latest line of release (Help > About Thunderbird).

Installing the addon is a breeze. Browse to your addon manager via Tools > Addons and click the button “Install”. This will now open up a file browser, navigate to wherever you saved the .xpi file we just downloaded (usually within your browsers designated download folder) and follow the dialogue to install the lightning extension.

Bingo! We now have lightning installed within Thunderbird, much easier and more convenient than having Sunbird open as well, right? We are now half way there! Feel free to add any calendars you have that are hosted on the web using your share URLs and we will now move onto configuring the addon that allows Lightning to communicate with your exchange server.

Configuring Lightning Exchange extension

As lightly touched in the previous section, this addon (in basic terminology) allows Lightning, which is now working within Thunderbird, to communicate with your server, allowing you to both – read and write – to the exchange calendar. Firstly, we will need to download the exchange-lightning addon, you can find that over at Gitorious as a project “lightning-exchange-provider”. Download it and save it to a known location.

We will now need to follow the same steps to install this extension as we did with the Lightning addon itself. Cool, huh? Open up your addon manager in Thunderbird, navigate to the newly downloaded .xpi file and install the lightning-exchange-provider. Restarting Thunderbird is a requirement and once reopened, we will now be able to get cracking, and set up our exchange calendar. Click the small calendar icon in the top right navigation menu (the calendar may open in a new tab for you already, if so, click it) and the calendar should be visible in a newly opened tab. Right click under the calendar “home” and click “Add new calendar”.

Select “On the network” option. We will now need to select “Exchange” as that’s what we are adding after all (this “Exchange” selection is not available without the lightning-exchange-provider addon – just so you know that I am not asking you to install random scripts). Give the calendar a name, colour etc., and now we will need to enter the URL.

For auto configuration: http://youremail@domain.com@auto

For manual settings: https://youremail@domain.com@exchangeserver.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx

I prefer to use the above choice, as the manual configuration seems to chuck out errors. Change youremail@domain.com to the address (or username – ask your network administrator) that has the calendar and for the second option enter your server domain after the second @ symbol. On the next dialogue you will receive a pop-up asking for your logins for the account. Click save and wait for your calendar to synchronize.

If you followed all steps correctly and triple checked your credentials are spot on then you should have a fully working calendar on your exchange server, which you can both read and write to (given that your email account has sufficient permissions). If you are having trouble, re-read the steps, take your time, and then comment on this post for some limited support.

theDiskussion (German for ‘the discussion’, see what we’ve done there?) is my answer to my needs above. A general forum that is feature rich and able to tap into your Facebook and Twitter profiles which opens up new avenues to go down with synchronizing your forum account with your avatar, about me, status updates and more. Can’t be bothered to log into FaceBook to update your status? Post it directly from our end! Lazy sod.

Although there are many communities already established and many have accumulated thousands of posts, we believe that theDiskussion offers a more relaxed and integrated community. Sure, we are still a forum, but we allow Facebook connection, Twitter integration and more. You don’t need to go out your way to spend time on our web site, one click login allows you to get access to the latest happenings within the community (if you’re logged in at Facebook or Twitter) without spending time entering a username and password.

Moving on from our login features and social media interaction, we also have a gallery which is completely open to registered members. Upload your photos, images, designs, photography work and more for public viewing. Perfect for freelance photographers requiring a platform for publishing work, and for you to show us your latest self portraits. If you are in need of a laugh, we also feature a ‘Funny Images’ category, which will be populated with the best and most humorous images found and submitted by our user base.

User blogs is an available feature for any registered member to create their own blog within our community. Posting entries, subscribing to other blogs, sharing on social networks, and more. If you already own an external blog, import your posts or list it as a linked external website. With more feature available on top of this snippet of goodness, there is no reason why you shouldn’t visit theDiskussion when it opens up to the masses. To stay tuned for updates and an announcement on an opening date follow us on Twitter. Also, you might wish to visit our Facebook page and become a fan.

We stayed at the Grand Kurdoglu Hotel (Otel in Turkish – I’m learning!), which is a four star, equivalent to a three start hotel in England. Their website is horrible, I love being in SEO you look at website completely differently to the norm surfer. On the other hand the hotel itself is nice, looks good from the outside and the main lobby is well presented. Rooms are okay too, the hotel in a country like this is only a base after all, right? You want to spend as much time at the pool, beach or other sites as possible.

Food is edible, yet not enjoyable. Drinks are free (water, soft drinks, beer, Raki, Gin and a few others), which is always nice on Turkish Night or a party. The WiFi (using it on my phone) is complete crap, cutting out or not working at all and if I forget to close the connection my side the router still believes I’m connected until they clear it after a few days. The pool is great, situated across the road from the hotel itself, it is perfect for people to engage in volleyball and other activities.

Kuşadası itself is a great place, but coming from the UK and a well built up area of Shoeburyness (pun intended) Turkey looks somewhat ‘run down’ if compared to the presentation of British towns and villages. Being a port town, you are sure to find some fantastic restaurants, hotels and market stalls / shops to choose from. There seems to be never a dull moment in the town as around 3am in the morning, shops were open, McDonald’s were cooking burgers and bars we manic.

The majority of the holiday itself was spent relaxing and enjoying the sun, while learning to dive (yes I’m 20 and I have only just learnt how to dive) and jumping onto floats to try and attempt a landing. A small percentage was spent on planned outings and excursions, one being Adaland. They boast to be the ‘largest waterpark in Europe’, it really isn’t that large when you’re there. Sure, they may have acres of land on a hill and a good few number of pools along with a wave machine, but their slides and ‘hardcore entertainment’ was questionable. The best part of this water park is the incredibly loud music they play at dance-in-the-water-jets time.

The second excursion we chose to go on in the second week in gateway to Asia was a boat trip around some coastal beaches and cliffs. This was by far my favourite part of the holiday, for many reasons I must list below:

• I jumped off a cliff into the sea (I am really not good with heights).
• Saw some great scenery and explored some clear waters.
• The food was good along with the drinks (unlike the hotel).
• I met Ezgi Çisil Erdoğan in the most random circumstance.

The last point in that list is the main reason as to why I’d return to Turkey. Seeing the sights and experiencing different sides of the culture is one thing, seeing that someone who you can’t take your mind off is another. Staying up until 4am on the last Thursday of the holiday, we had a great night with a few drinks, a walk and the seaside.

A major downside I saw in Turkey (speaking from an Englishman POV) is the insane driving that seems to take place. Over-taking, under-taking and incredibly risky u-turning to begin with. Sure, society might be used to it, but when you come from a country controlled by traffic lights and rules of the road, it seems too much. As well as the driving, you have the constant bullying to enter shops or buy a product from a market stall, or even eat in at a restaurant. Walking down the seafront you can get bombarded by employees who invite you to eat at their restaurant, I was tempted to record me saying “no thanks” and then playing it back to every person.

If you would like a hot and enjoyable holiday, which is also cheap when you are there, Turkey is a fantastic choice.

The first time I encountered Adbrite was back in 2005, when I first began entering the money making sphere in desperate attempt to even out the cost in running a few discussion boards (I was both jobless and in secondary school at the time). While forums are fantastic at generating page views, they lack the strong chance of click through to really rake in the income from any advertising campaign.

Receiving a whopping estimate of around five pence per thousand impressions, things weren’t looking so bad with 10K + impressions being smashed per day (it was helping me feed my sweet addiction and the odd video game). I was, however, a long way off living the millionaire “working from home” dream that many people share these days. I needed to rethink my plan of action and possibly consider other networks to potentially receive a better payout.

Moving onto Adsense and  a few other options, I found only Adbrite and Adsense itself to provide me with a comfortable CPM (cost per impression), which was a slight pain in the rear end as these two networks are the ones I was trying my best to avoid if you will. Compared to Adsense, Adbrite lacks in looks. If we were to compare them as two operating systems, Adsense would be OS X and Adbrite would be a dated Windows 95. The reporting feature is horrid to look at and navigate, with no graphs or presentations available (BlackLabelAds is part of Adbrite and is their adult marketplace).

Although it displays all the information and detail any publisher would want to glance at when checking how much monies are floating around their account, it isn’t full featured with in-depth analysis optimized graphs and data. This is a real let down, since it hasn’t been redesigned or updated to compete with the aesthetically pleasing advertisement networks that all have a stunning web 2.0 interface.

Along with the not-so-easy-to-use dashboard, you can’t view exactly how much you are earning with every click on an advert you are publishing (I can’t find this information, if you have please shout at me). Visiting the earnings section, it displays your earnings for each month. Narrowing this down to daily earnings by selecting the desired month and then viewing the data for that specific day, one would expect a clear view on how much is being earned via CPM and actual clicks.

I suppose this could be set up like so to prevent any publisher from seeing the terrible earning predictions? My site is relatively new and I’m lost within the realm of adult content, which I understand is an extremely competitive niche, and my eCPM (estimated earning from a 1,000 impressions) was $0.03 to $0.05. Not bad should you be receiving heavy volumes of traffic, but for a new blog traffic takes time to build. A quick note would supply that Adsense was offering a £0.77 eCPM for my new forum (which isn’t ready yet), so it’s quite a huge difference between the two. However, like I said, the blog is in the adult genre.

With the earning being relatively low from the adult advertisement network (I’m hoping it’s going to improve with advertisers directly buying spots on the blog in the near future) and Adbrite as a whole when compared to Adsense, what is the delivery of the adverts like? Are they relative the the sub-category that my site is in? Since I first implemented the BlackLabelAds code into my adult website, I have received adverts I see on the big adult tube hubs, which is great. The adverts are set to what my site is about and doesn’t contain any erotic or offensive pornographic content. It is nowhere near as great as Adsense for targeting ads however.

From analysing the above, Adbrite is an ‘okay’ network to get into. It pays out well (compared to the majority of networks out there), targets good adverts to your site(s) and is extremely easy to use. Having BlackLabelAds as a sister site dedicated for adult advertising is fantastic too. The drawbacks of Adbrite are present and easy to spot with the dashboard being incredibly basic, no in-depth information or data on earnings and advertisement positions, and a somewhat confusing system which calculates what you have earned.

What are your experiences with Adbrite? Have you chosen them over another network?

Welcome to richedmonds.co.uk v3 (or is it v2? I’ve lost count), if I were counting how many times I re-created traygon.com, then we would be hitting double figures with ease. For this version of my site, this will be the final one with no more renewals – I have to make this work. Moving on from my old design chosen, I am going back to the power of Woo Themes and using one of their excellent choices.

Starting a fresh beginning...

So what can you expect from me this year and for the future? For starters, I will be publishing insightful posts into my life, along with helpful articles about server management, social networking, forum administration, and much more. As I’m British you will need to expect some crazy rants (already happening on my Twitter account) about anything that annoys me beyond the “outer rim”.

I will be re-posting many posts from my backup that were found to be both successful and regularly searched for. Unfortunately, I will be keeping all my old RuneScape articles in my backup file, apart from possibly the “How to create a RuneScape clan?” post.  Apologies to those who enjoyed my rants, rambles and sick humour covering the MMORPG, if you wish to complain at me then by all means do so. I’ll most likely laugh at you.

My feed has remained the same, so if you are already subscribed to my blog then fear not; you will continue to receive updates from my full feed. If you are not a subscriber, you can enter the realm of supremacy by clicking the big orange button to the left of this post in the sidebar.