Spring Break is almost here!

It’s been a while since I’ve updated, and to be honest, nothing too exciting has happened. Like usual, I’m pretty much busy with school and homework, leaving little time for any significant work in development. My grades are lower than I want them to be, partly because of my terrible start of the semester thanks to FBLA.

During January and February, I was busy working on two big projects for FBLA, aka Future Business Leaders of America. I entered two events: Web Site Development and Internet Application Programming, which literally sucked hours upon hours of my time. Good news though– I have made States for one of the events. I’m not sure about the other one yet (results are not out yet), but I am CONFIDENT that I have made States for that event too.

Lastly, I have a major project in the workings. Still in the very, very very early stages, but I am VERY excited! Hopefully, I will have proper funding to really get it off its feet. More details to come! (:

Where my $62,000 went.

Despite the rumors of how loaded I am with money, in reality, I’m close to being broke. No, I didn’t go on a $62,000 shopping spree online, no I didn’t spend on a car. I spent a crapload on helping out my mom and grandparents. Especially in tough financial times, almost everyone is struggling. When $62,000 fell from the sky in front of me, I was extremely happy at first, but then I realized that I should take this blessing and help my family out. $15,000 was taken by the government (damn IRS), $12,000 went to my parents, $5,000 went to bills, $7,000 went to my grandma and family, but only $13,000 has been invested in other projects. Basically, I have about $10,000 remaining, which is proving to grow smaller and smaller as I am about to spend a huge chunk on a few projects of mine that are soon to come.

But it’s all good, cause I got my friend, eBay:

Been so busy lately.

With school taking over my life (again), it’s really hard to keep up with my projects. With the recent sale of ZuneBoards, that takes a heavy burden off my shoulders, but I am still short of time. Don’t you wish a day was 30 hours instead of 24? Man that’d be sick.

Also, a lot of my time has been taken away by my (two) FBLA projects. So right now, I have about 4 projects I’m working on.

However, I can tell you a few things: be very excited. I’ve been working with my friend recently, and I can tell you that awesome projects are on their way. I can’t give away too much information right now, but personally I have 2 projects that I’m very excited about.

Let’s see if I can pull this one off by this Summer ‘09.

Part 2: Tips on Starting a Successful Forum

Make sure to read Part 1 before starting.

1. Forum Software - Choosing the right forum software can be a great time and money saver in the long run. I can testify from personal experience. It’s really a pain in the ass for you AND the members to go through a forum software switch. It screws up a lot of the permissions and makes your members reset their password (depending on the forum softwares). Right from the beginning, choose a software to stick with. I highly recommend vBulletin.
2. Post Exchanges - In my opinion, this is the easiest way to make your forum seem more active. Everyday, hundreds of webmasters are exchanging posts on forums. What does that all mean? To put it in a simple way, if someone leaves 20 posts on your forum, you leave 20 posts on their forum. When I first began my forum, I did ton of this, and received hundreds of posts. Without post exchanges, I doubt my forum would exist right now.
3. Organization - I hate unorganized forums. Forums that are hard to navigate, messy, and confusing can deter users away. Try not to make too many forum categories and sections. All they do is make the forum homepage longer and make the forum seem emptier. Unpopular/inactive forums should be merged with other larger forums.
4. Number of staff - Remove all unnecessary staff. If there is no moderation and managing needed, why are they even on the staff list? Don’t take me wrong though, staff can’t be really helpful. It’s just embarrassing if a guest lands on your forum and sees more admins and mods than active members.
5. Professionalism - Present your forum in a professional manner, with a good looking design, easy to read, good grammar, and nothing obnoxious. cuz no1 wantz to c u talk lyk dis. itz anoying lol

Well, there you go. I hope you really got something out of it. It’s sad to see forums (some with great potential and a great niche) die out really fast. I may make a part 3, depending on your feedback, so please vote.

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Part 1: Tips on Starting a Successful Forum

In this post, I will explain exactly what I did to establish a successful forum. If you are lazy, have little or no motivation, and/or have no time, you are not fit for a forum. Out of all type of sites you can start, forums are widely accepted by many web masters as ‘the hardest’ type of site to start. It’s not that people dislike forums, but people are intimidated by ‘empty’ forums. Even the largest forums in the world had to start somewhere with 1 or 2 posts… but how in the world did they get people to start posting? Here are a few tips that can get you started.

1. Niche - One major reason many new forums fail is because there are too many forums on the same topic! Don’t even bother starting a forum on iPods, Programming, Video Games, etc.. There are simply too many forums (some that are very well established) competing with you. Unless you have something unique to offer, it will not work. Instead, focus on other things that you are passionate about! Whether it be gardening, dancing, or the new promising product that came out, it has a much better chance of being successful.
2. Forum Design - When users come to your forum and see the default design, they’ll assume that the forum hasn’t been updated in ages, or the admin simply doesn’t care. If you’re going to leave the default design, at least include your own logo. Other than that, I highly encourage a unique, professional looking design that makes people say “wow.”
3. Dedicated Staff - Starting a forum by yourself can be a lot of work, and very lonesome. Try to get close friends that you know will help you and is interested in your forum niche.
4. Content - There’s a saying in the Web Development world that “Content is King.” It’s true. High quality content will bring new members. That doesn’t mean that you should add high quality content and your site will flourish. You need to keep on adding new content on a regular basis to keep those visitors to keep on coming back. Content that is related to your forum niche will interest guests, which will eventually lead to registration. Posting a tutorial on how to gaining a six-pack in 3 months will not do well in a gardening forum.
5. Link Building - Content is King, then Link Building is Queen. Not only will it increase the chances that people will click the link and visit your site, but it also improves Search Engine rankings. Search Engine rankings are crucial in a successful forum. The more links you build to your site, the higher ranking you will get.

Part 2 coming soon! Part 2 is here! Part 2 will give you tips on how to get that first few posts– the hardest part in starting a forum.

Page Titles Are Important to Forums

Page titles, most importantly the index page title, are crucial to how your website will rank in the search engines. Poor page titles can also turn away potential visitors. When a person is searching in Google for a ‘computer help forum’, they may find that the first 4 results have the following page titles: Computer Help Forum, PC Help, Computer Support Forum, and Silly Joe Bytes - Powered by vBulletin. While ‘Silly Joe Bytes’ may be an excellent computer help forum, odds are a general web surfer will pass over this forum because of it’s poor page title.

When choosing a forum page title for your index page, it is important to assign meaning to it. Don’t use a nickname or something you think is cool. It make work if you’re a celebrity like ShoeMoney, but odds are the general web surfer isn’t going to know who you are or what monikers you go by. If you have a computer help forum, then try to keep those keywords in your index page title.

Cleaning Your Page Title

When you install vBulletin, or other forum software, they often include a ‘powered by xxx’ in your page title. By including this in the default, they are lucky enough to get a few forum owners who either don’t care or don’t know how to remove it. Having a page title that says “Dog Forum - Powered by vBulletin” is not as friendly as a page title of just “Dog Forum”. First, the extra words in your page title will take away some of the authority of your main keywords. You want all your strength going to the keywords Dog and Forum, not Powered and vBulletin. And second, it’s not as attractive. Really, no one but webmasters knows what vBulletin is. If a 40 year-old single mom if browsing the internet, she might skip over your entry in Google simple because she’s unfamiliar with what vBulletin is and why it’s in your page title. She’ll just click the next site on the list with a better page title.

So how do you remove the “Powered by vBulletin”? It’s quite simple really. In your VB Admin panel, go to the template editor and select FORUMHOME. In there you will see:

<title><phrase 1=”$vboptions[bbtitle]”>$vbphrase[x_powered_by_vbulletin]</phrase></title>

Keep it simple and remove everything between <title> and </title>. Enter in the title of your choice, such as < title >Computer Help Forum< / title >. It’s that simple. By doing this, your forum will keep the remaining page title structure and edit the index page title only.

As for phpBB 3.0, if you want to edit your page title you need to open the overall_header.php file in your styles/template name folder. You will see a line that looks like this:

<title>{SITENAME} • {L_MCP} • {L_UCP} • {PAGE_TITLE}</title>

From here you can add/edit anything between the < title > tags to create your own custom page title.

In conclusion, having a clean, user friendly page title is very important to the success of your blog. Not only will it move up the SERPs quicker because you have targeted keywords in the title, but you’re forum will appear more approachable to the general browser.

If you are running vBulletin and have the money, I HIGHLY suggest purchasing vBSEO. It will take care of all things SEO related, and will make your life that much easier.

vBulletin vs phpBB

The age old question in forum management. Which forum software is better? vBulletin or phpBB? To answer this question, I’ll run through a quick comparison chart between the two products.

vBulletin

Cost: $160 (owned), $85 (leased)

Installation: vBulletin is very easy to install. You upload the files, create your database and then follow the steps for the rest. vBulletin Install lays everything out in about 14 steps. You simply fill in the information and click the next button. It takes under 5 minutes.

Modifcations: This is where vBulletin crushes phpBB in my opinion. vBulletin has hundreds of mods for members to download for free. Everything from arcades, to sports books, to content management systems, to photo galleries or chat rooms. And not only does vBulletin have tons of mods, but they are all insanely easy to install. Rarely do you have to do a template modification. You simply upload the mod files, and import a product xml in your Admin Panel and the rest is done for you. This is what sets vBulletin a part from Phpbb.

Styles: There is no denying vBulletin is the better looking of the two forum softwares. I have seen some amazing custom vbulletin styles. Even the free template downloads look hot.

Admin Panel: vBulletin has an awesome admin panel. It’s very easy to use and everytime you install a new product, it will appear in your admin panel for easy customization. Everything you ever need to do in vBulletin can be done in the Admin Panel.

phpBB

Cost: Free

Installation: phpBB is also easy to install. You upload the files, create your database and follow the step by step instructions. There is very little editing you will have to do.

Modifications: Because phpBB is open source, a lot of the standard features in vBulletin are not standard in phpBB. If you plan on having a large forum with a lot of mods, running it with phpBB can be a pain. Finding the mods you want is a task in itself. Installing them is even harder. Most phpBB mods require intensive code modifications. Some require your to be knowledgable in php. It can take upwards to 30 minutes of template modifications to install one mod. Then you have to pray you didn’t miss a piece of code. phpBB really lacks in the modifications department.

Styles: phpBB has a wide variety of free styles for download. Some of them look the same, but with a custom header and a few button changes, you can have a decent looking forum. But I’m not going to lie. I have never seen a custom phpBB style that blows me away. I don’t know why it is, but they just never look as good as vBulletin.

Admin Panel: phpBB 2’s admin panel was a complete joke. It was horrible. phpBB 3.0, however, is a HUGE step up. It’s not as in depth as vBulletin, but it’s darn close. You can edit just about everything in the admin panel.

By reading the above comparison, you can probably tell by now that I am a bit biased towards vBulletin. And honestly, if any of you have tried the two, then you will know why. The only reason I would suggest phpBB over vBulletin is if you simply can’t afford vBulletin. It really is superior in every aspect.

Not only is vBulletin easier to use, but it also looks way better. The functionality is more user friendly, and in the long run it is more stable and secure. If you plan on running a large, profitable forum, you really need to make the decision to go for vBulletin. Of course if you can’t afford it now, you can also port you phpBB database to vBulletin later on. Don’t believe what you read about phpBB being a stepping stone to vBulletin. You can start right off with the best.

Top 10 vBulletin Mods and Plugins

One of the reasons I love vBulletin so much is the massive library of mods (plugins and products) available for free download. By adding mods to your forum, you can transform a boring default forum into an interactive and evolved communication machine. Every forum must install mods.

In today’s post I will go over my top 10 vBulletin mods. The mods listed are not ranked in any specific order and are completely free. There are awesome mods such as vBSEO and Flashchat, but those cost money. Today I’m sticking with the free ones.

1. VbAdvanced - VBA is a portal / content management system used to organize the homepage of your website. I am a big fan of portals, because if non internet savvy people browse to your site and just see a forum, they might not know what it is. A portal divides the website up into sections for easy navigation. My homepage on Gator Envy uses VBA. You can see I have blocks for navigation, photos, recent threads, schedules, polls and more. The number of mods and hacks for vba are endless. You can also use it to create pages within your forum, such as Florida Gator Wallpapers.

2. ibProArcade - Every forum should have an arcade. In my opinion ibProArcade is the best one out there for Vbulletin. It integrates fully with a simply upload. It comes with about 7 games, but you can download more via their official website. Users also have the ability to create tournaments and crown champions. If you like showing your skills off, there is a nice leaderboard and you can even show “Tetris Champion” under your avatar.

3. vB Ad Management - One of the biggest concerns for forum owners is monetization. Nothing makes monetizing a forum easier than using vB Ad Management. It basically allows you to put ads in any section of your forum, and gives you the option to display the ads to any user group. You can display ads in post threads as well. Just put your code into the admin section, and it does the rest.

It makes adding, changing and removing advertisements on your website very simple. You won’t ever need to look through endless code for edits.

4. vbBux / vbPlaza - Vbplaza is a points system/shop that integrates into your forum. Users earn points for creating threads and making posts. The number of points earned is fully customizable within the admin panel. Users can then use these points to purchase ribbons, gifts, icons or just about anything your heart desires. Members can also buy name changes, username modifications and more. You can pretty much sell anything you want on there. It comes with a bank (and yes you can give out interest and charge taxes on withdrawls).

This mod is perfect if you plan on giving out T-shirts or prizes for users who reach a certain number of points.

5. Members who have visited in the last 24 hours - Nothing makes a vBulletin forum appear active than displaying the total number of members who have visited in the last 24 hours. You see them on just about every forum. It’s a long list of members at the very bottom of the page. This is a great mod in my opinion.

6. Cyb - Advanced Forum Statistics - This mod allows for advanced forum statistics to be shown on the forum home page. You can place it anywhere, but I prefer the bottom, somewhere near the Users Online section. You can display top posts, newest members, hot threads, latest posts and more. It gives members a quick location to find important forum statistics.

7. Photoplog: The Lite Gallery - One of the best photo gallery mods you can find. You can see an example of it on the Gator Envy Gallery. Create categories and albums for members to upload pictures into. Members can also add captions and leave replies to on other photos. If you have an active forum where members like to show off (such as a tattoo or car forum), this is a must have mod.

8. Embed Youtube and Google Videos - This mod allows members to post Youtube or Google Videos into a post. It’s more of a fun mod people like to use in the Lounge, but it can be very useful if your forum revolves around movies or music videos.

9. Email Inactive Users - Reach out to those members who have drifted from your forum with this simple mod. It allows you to automatically send an email to users who have either not signed on in 2 weeks, or haven’t posted in two weeks. It’s up to you. The email message is also fully customizable.

Note that members can get annoyed with this mod if you’re sending them an email every other day reminding them about their inactivity. Don’t get aggressive with this mod.

10. iTrader - Most forum administrators know what iTrader is by now. Forums like Digitalpoint use it. iTrader is the mod that allows members to give feedback, like on eBay, to other members. They can leave positiv, negative or neutral feedback plus leave comments. This is a great mod for a forum that does any buying, selling or trading.

So there you have it, my Top 10 vBulletin Mods (plugins and products). Make your forum a better community for the members by installing some special add-ons. And like I said above, they are all free for download to vBulletin license holders.