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ForumCon is Back for 2012

James — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:01:34 +0000

This year it will be once again in San Francisco, this time at the Hotel Kabuki on June 12th.

I was wanting to go to Chicago last year, but my schedule just wouldn’t allow for it. This year I’m really thinking about going. Since it’s on the West Coast and it’s just a short flight for me.

Early bird tickets are only $69.00 until February 29th, you can’t beat that.

You can get all the details at their website ForumCon

So are you going? If so I hope to see you there!

How to add ads on ForumDisplay vBulletin Mobile Style

James — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:39:22 +0000

In the past couple of days I’ve been playing around with vBulletin’s Premium Mobile Style and adding ads here and there. Currently I am testing it out Adsense for Mobile Content.

Adding the ads is pretty easy, In your admincp got to your mobile style and find FORUMDISPLAY, Open the FORUMDISPLAY template and find


			

			{vb:raw pagenav}

add your ad code below. You will also want to align it to the center.

Like I said I am using Adsense for Mobile Content and using a 320X50 size ad. Starting in March I will start selling private ads on the mobile style. I just launched the mobile style this week and want to get a overview of it being used on a daily and monthly basis.

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How to Disable vBadvanced when using vBulletin mobile style

James — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:17:28 +0000

*This is not for the mobile suite app, this is for the premium mobile style

I love vBadvanced and use it on a couple of my forums. But there is one thing that bothers me, it doesn’t look good on a mobile phone when using the vBulletin premium mobile style.

On one of my forums I wanted to skip the vBadvanced homepage and go directly to the forum itself. Here is how I did it:

Go into your AdminCP and click on the Styles & Templates section and click on your Mobile Style (don’t do this on your main site), click on edit templates and find the adv_portal, this should be located under the vBadvanced CMPS Templates.

Remove all the code and replace with:

{vb:stylevar htmldoctype}

This will redirect all mobile users to your forum itself when using the vBulletin Mobile Style.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Make sure you always back up your forum before doing any changes to your site.!

SQL Query to Remove “Receive Emails from Administrators” in vBulletin

James — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:55:42 +0000

Sorry Guys I scheduled this post for the wrong day, DOH!

As you saw in my post the other day about vBulletin and AOL emails fiasco. How do I uncheck all the “Receive Emails from Administrators” without searching the entire AOL and removing them one by one?

First I did a search in my AdminCp, just to see how many would be affected and this forum it was 225 users with AOL email addresses.

So how do you “bulk” uncheck the “Receive Emails from Administrators”, you can run a SQL query in the vBulletin AdminCp.

****FIRST Back-up your data, always do this! (Also I’m not responsible for data loss)

UPDATE user SET options=options - 16 WHERE options & 16 AND email LIKE "%@aol.%";

And this will uncheck all AOL emails. In less than 15 seconds I was done and hopefully no more issues.

On this week’s Forum Advice Friday, I’m going to post a question to you about the “Receive Emails from Administrators” and looking forward to hearing from you and your thoughts

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vBulletin, AOL emails and My Troubles

James — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 14:19:53 +0000

For years I know that vBulletin and most other forum software programs have had issues with sending emails to AOL, whether it is registration emails, PM emails, newsletters, etc.

So let me tell you about my issues that happen to me on Friday morning right before the long Labor Day Weekend, which I already planned to head out of town.

I had just woken up and was doing my daily routine before getting the kids ready for school checking emails answering a few when I got the an email that no one ever wants to see:

Your web hosting account for XXXXXXXX has been deactivated, as of 09/02/2011. (reason: terms of service violation – spam)

WTF? Spam?

I called immediately to find out what was going on. Besides waiting on hold forever, I was finally able to get someone on the line.

One of the reasons was that they said it was because I was using a cron job to send out my emails, which is true and I explained to them I use a cron job because they limit how many emails I can send out per hour. Okay, done and they were satisfied.

But there was more…

Next he said that they were going get blacklisted from AOL because I was sending emails to AOL emails addresses and have been for months, which again is true. He was told by AOL that the email contents were related to my domain name and topic, which as soon as he pulled up the email he chuckle because the title and the first few lines were directly related to my site’s topic.

He asked if all the emails were “opt-in” emails. I told him that I have a check box at registration just like all the other vBulletin forums stating “Accept emails from administrators” Well he and I went round and round about this check box, but that’s another post.

So what they suggested is that I no longer accept AOL emails registrations or send any more emails to any forum members using AOL email addresses. Which I have now done and I’ve also posted an announcement on my forum about the AOL issues.

When it was all said and done I was down for about 50 minutes. Which being a business owner can be devastating and embarrassing to say the least.

Tomorrow I’ll post on how to do the SQL query on how to uncheck/check the accept admin emails in vBulletin.

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Forum Advice Friday #5

James — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:54:22 +0000

Should I add chat box to my forum?

I’m a big believer in letting the forum be your “chat box”. There isn’t any reason to add another place that members should chat; all chat should be on the forum itself.

One thing you can to to make sure that your members stay and “chat” is to have a general chat on your forum, in many cases this maybe your largest section on your forum.

Also I would not allow members posts to be counted in this section either. Most members may (do) use this section just to pad their post counts.

So no, I would not add a chat box to any forum under any circumstance.

Selecting A Forum Topic

James — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 15:45:51 +0000

So you have decided that you are going to start a forum?

That is a big step that a lot of people have made lately. It seems that discussion forums are more popular than they have ever been. I attribute this to the fact that the Internet is more popular than it has ever been too.

More people are able to connect with others. First things first, you have to decide on a topic that interests you. To do this, just think of some things that you are really knowledgeable about and can consider your self to be an expert in. If you pick some thing that you only know a little bit about, it can be really hard to create quality posts to keep people interested in your forum later on.

One you have selected a few topics that interest you, you can start to narrow them down by eliminating ones that do not interest others. For instance, if Al Pacino is one of your interests, it would be really hard to get an active discussion forum going for just him. It should be a topic that interests others as well. I am not saying that you can not make an Al Pacino forum, I am just saying that is going to make it ten times harder on you to get people to join when it is some thing that specific. Maybe instead of Al Pacino, you could make a forum about classic movies, movies starring Pacino, or some thing to that affect.

If you are having trouble and you can not even think of a topic, there are a few things that you can do to get the brain going and find some thing that interests you. Check out some of the forum topsites, which you can just Google that, and see some of the other forums that are already out there. You can also go to some admin forums and see what some of the other forum owners around the world have come up with.

That should surely give you some ideas of forums that you could come up with.

ForumCon – Are You Going?

James — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:05:26 +0000

What is ForumCon:

DEVELOPING AND MONETIZING FORUMS AND COMMUNITIES
ForumCon is a forum and communities conference that brings together leading brands, forum owners and community managers to explore strategies in forum and community development.

During the one-day event, a team of renowned experts provides guidance on how to effectively engage with communities, gives tips on how to maximize the value of your communities and offers insights into new services to try and trends to watch out for. – From ForumCon website.

This year it will be held on September 27th 2011 in Chicago, IL. I’ve heard some great things about it and have watched some of the videos from the last conference in San Francisco. It seems like it would be a great small event to attend to really learn some things.

I’m really thinking about going, I’m just trying to clear my schedule to attend.

If you’ve you went to the 1st one in San Francisco, give me your impressions? And are you going to attend this one?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sorry for the Lack of Post

James — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:46:18 +0000

Hi All,

Sorry for not updating the blog in awhile. I’ve been very busy buying and selling some sites, mostly buying.

I’ve also picked up a few new clients, so that has also been keeping me busy also.

I wanted to let you all know that I have some great articles coming up and that next week I will be returning with Forum Advice Fridays once again.

Thanks again for your continued support and look forward to getting back into the groove once again.

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Forum Advice Friday #4

James — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:33:13 +0000

Should I pay my Administrators or Moderators?

Well I think that all depends on you and your ability to pay and if you even want to.

There are lots of forums out that a strictly on a volunteer basis and to some it’s an honor to be an admin or a mod, although it can go to their head a little sometimes.

If you are going to pay, think about what you are going to have them do. Are they going to go out and actively search for new members, advertise? Are they just going to manage the board (ie delete post, banned members, etc.) and look at what your role will be in all of this.

Maybe look at doing giftcards at the Xmas or look at revenue sharing with Google Adsense. There are many ways to “pay” someone without it coming out of your pocket.

So do you pay your staff? Let me know I would love to hear from you.

Sorry for not posting last week, I was out of town for the holiday weekend.