Promotion

[tinfish]

hey mh,

i would imagine that you'd like to promote this forum.
in order to do so, firstly it does need to be on its own domain, rather than using domain forwarding to here.

you need incoming links. no web directory, DMOZ or smaller will link to you if its not on a proper domain. also it confuses anyone that would like to naturally link, which to use? SEs may not give 'full credit' for all links pointing to various domains, penalise for not on domain mayb et al etc.. etc...

installing forum software is very easy, you will have done something more difficult today on your comp see www.opensourcecms.com/ for demo's.

one last comment, there are to many boards! start with a few and expand as membership does.

lots and lots of seemingly empty boards confuses and puts average joe off. also with less boards they look much more busy, people more likely to post.

i hope you dont mind my comments.

delete this post or line if you want.

[Madhatter]

I've been discussing this over the last few days. To be honest I'm cofused, I've never done this before. What is clear to me is that it needed the domain, but although it can be set up to forward, it needs a home page that links to sub pages or this forum. I'm looking at doing that but I'm also looking at a non proboards forum for this site.

If I change to a different type of forum, I'll consider changing the layout.

[tinfish]

you need an actual server, or least in reality a share of an actual server.

your host will automaticly give your site an ip when you set it up.
you point your domain (from your domain providers account login) at your hosts nameservers; files on the host server which say which IP the domain refers to.

so now when people type in the domain it goes to the IP address. only the domain is shown.
currently it just forwards the domain to atherstoneforum.proboards76.com .

sign up here, created some sites, try out some of the forums you've seen. www.nearlyfreespeech.net/
tutorials there as well.

really to get anywhere you need a 'proper' website and domain.
you will have much more control and be able to do much more stuff.
cost will be minimal and you can cover it with some ads if u want.

[Madhatter]

Yes, I realised what you meant. I meant If I were to keep this proboards forum I still need to get my own server space, with a home page at the very least, for the url to point to. All new stuff to me, this time last year I didn't even know what HTML was.
Thanks for that top link, I've only just looked at it, I was thinking of phpbb, but what puts me off is those pesky spam bots, that the cricket club is getting. Why can't they put a visual sign up check on it like proboards have done.