I was incredibly busy this weekend working on my new computer (more on that later), as well as researching a new hosting company to move to. vBulletin has a built in system that will send a message to an email address you specify whenever there are errors occuring on the site. The most common message I’ll receive from every forum I run is “too many users connected to ‘blank’ SQL database”. Because my sites are in a shared hosting environment my sites keep hitting the limit set by my host on a continual basis. If I ever have a huge surge in traffic I’ll receive a hundred messages from vBulletin saying too many people are connected to the site at one time, if not more. This translates to people getting errors like “Page cannot be displayed” and people having to retype their posts at times. So this weekend I decided I better break down and get a dedicated server. It’s been a long time coming and I realistically should have done this 6 months ago, but I finally decided now was the time.

I went with SoftLayer.com for the dedicated server. I had looked at SoftLayer before, talked with their sales staff and read a lot of positive reviews before choosing them. So I am confident that I’ll be able to stay with the company for a while, I even negotiated with the sales staff for a little price reduction. However, when all is said and done I’m still going to be paying well over 10 times I was previously paying on hosting before. It’s not all heart ache though as the best thing about the move is that I’ll finally have the breathing room I’ve desired for a long time now. The server move will allow me to promote my sites more freely and expand without fear. Because of my move to a dedicated server company, I also found the need to hire a server management company. If I had the time I’d be able to learn how to administer my own server, but I don’t and it’s certainly not something that interests me. So I have contracted a server management company to take care of making sure the server is up, update software, maintain security and help me with transfering my sites.

I am sure the transition will be smooth but I’ll be working with them later today to handle the migration. I will post an update tomorrow on how things went, as well as more details about the server management company and the migration process.

Have you had to transfer servers yet? If so, how did the move go?

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We’re halfway to the three month mark since the installation of vBSEO on HaloBoards.com, so that brings us to Week 10 of the case study on vBSEO’s affect on search engine indexing and increasing web traffic for HaloBoards.com. Here are the numbers for Week 10:

site:haloboards.com (Google) down 900 to 24,100

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) down 205 to 12,850

site:haloboards.com (MSN) down 13 to 207

This weeks numbers were all down; however, last week Yahoo had a 1,512 gain so I’m not that concerned about the 205 drop brought about this week. I’m also not concerned by the drop in numbers for the other search engines as I’m still sitting at results that are well above what we started with. I still recommend vBSEO to vBulletin forum owners as it has so far shown to improve search engine indexing and increase search engine traffic for my vBulletin forum HaloBoards.com.

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I’ve been using the same computer for about 6 years! My old computer is a Dell P4 1.7 Ghz, with 768 MB of ram (2 x 128mb and 2 x 256 mb) and a GeForce 5200 (Upgraded from a previous GeForce 2 32mb card that I’d been rocking for about 5 years).

You’re probably thinking to yourself right now, “How does this guy get any work done on that slow machine?” Well, the short answer is would be, with patience. I don’t know how I managed it, but this is the same computer that I even used to edit Halo videos in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5 (If you’re interested, check out thehalogod.com).

I’m really happy about the new computer as it should be coming in this week and I hope to have it all built on this weekend.

The specs on the new machine:

Intel Q6600 - Quad Core 2.4 Ghz Processor
EVGA LGA 775 Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Mobo
EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB (I just went with a mid range DX 10 card as I’m not a huge PC gamer)
Antec Performance One P180B Case
FSP Blue Storm II 500 ATX 2.2V 500W Power Supply
G.Skill 2GB (2×1 GB sticks) DDR2 800
Lite On 20X DVD Burner
500 GB SeaGate SATA HD (Will add another later when I need it)
Zalman 9700 (Air Cooling for when I later decide to overclock to 3.0 Ghz)

Total came out to about $1200 (before $100 in mail-in rebates).

Overall, I’m really pleased with the stuff I got for the price. This should last me for a while I think

I went with the quad core because it’s the best processor to help speed up video editing / encoding times. I am also am a huge multitasker, so I’m looking forward to the time where I can be simultaneously uploading a video to HaloBoards.com, rendering a video in Adobe Premiere Pro and playing some Age of Empires III.

I’ll post back with pics and more info on how it runs. What do you think of the build?

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Here are the numbers for Week 9 of my case study on vBSEO’s affect on search engine indexing and increasing web traffic for HaloBoards.com:

site:haloboards.com (Google) stayed even at 25,000

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) up 1512 to 13,055

site:haloboards.com (MSN) up 5 to 220

There was no change with Google and only an increase by 5 results for MSN, but the real winner here was Yahoo this week. Yahoo added an extra 1,512 results to hit 13,055. Overall, I’m still pleased with my purchase of vBSEO and it has so far shown to improve search engine indexing and increase search engine traffic for my vBulletin forum HaloBoards.com.

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As I mentioned in an earlier post, once the vBSEO’s case study reaches the 3 month mark I decided that would be a good time to switch to giving updates every two weeks instead of once a week. Again, I’ve seen a small drop from Google this week, but Yahoo picked up some slack. Here are the numbers for week 14:

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) down 14,000 to 203,000

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) up 2,885 to 27,111

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) up 7 to 142

If you’d like to see previous vBSEO case study updates check out the Forum SEO category on the side bar.

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We’ve hit the two month mark for the case study on vBSEO’s affect on search engine indexing and increasing web traffic. First lets get to the search engine site:haloboards.com numbers:

site:haloboards.com (Google) down 3,400 to 25,000

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) down 1,826 to 11,543

site:haloboards.com (MSN) up 64 to 215!!! (lol)

This week’s numbers were kind of funny. I know the drops are just typical search engine fluctuations because when I checked out the numbers earlier today they were even higher than what is listed above so I’m not too concerned at all. What is most important to me is vBSEO’s affect on sending more traffic to my forum and here are some graphs from Google Analytics:

April 10th to May 10th (1 month before vBSEO installation)

May 11th to June 11th (1 month after vBSEO installation)

June 12th to July 12th (2 months after vBSEO installation)

As you can see from the numbers, the search engine traffic went down a few percentage points after the first month but this month regained the lost ground and more to surpass the stats from before the vBSEO installation. The gains aren’t huge yet, but I am pleased with the results thus far. I think that GamingVidz has had better results so far, but the vBSEO has been installed on that site longer than for HaloBoards (it also has nearly ten times as many posts). I still recommend using vBSEO’s“>vBSEO to improve your site’s search engine indexing and increase search engine traffic for vBulletin forums.

Have these case studies helped you decide wether or not to purchase a vBSEO license for your forum?

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I’ve decided that after each vBSEO case study reaches the 3 month mark I will move to bi monthly updates instead of doing them on a weekly basis. GamingVidz.com hit the three month mark in the last update, so the next update for that case study will be next week. I believe that after vBSEO has been installed for a fair amount of time there won’t be as many changes in numbers so it’s overkill to write updates every week.

The good news is that this will allow me to write more things that are related to the focus of my blog: giving tips to improve your forum community.

What do you think of the vBSEO case studies though? Have they helped you make a descision on wether or not to purchase a license?

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In the first four parts of my start a forum series I covered picking a topic and buying a domain name, choosing a forum software, choosing a webhost and in my last update - creating the look of your forum. Today I’m going to cover more pre-launch steps that I use before showing off my new vBulletin forum.

If you’ve completed all of the steps above, the next thing to do is adjust a few of the vBulletin backend options. It is important to get all of the vBulletin options set up on the backend before you launch your forum because the default options don’t quite cut it.

The following list consists of settings I change and plugins I use for every vBulletin forum I launch:

- Disable Image verification in registration (Too hard for potential members to read and is unnecessary if using the No Spam! plugin)

- Set up a Welcome Private Message (Consists of a general welcome to the site and contains the site rules)

- Enable Verify Email Address in Registration (Helps to discourage spammers)

- Install No Spam! plugin - Stops all the spam bots in their tracks without relying on a users ability to decipher the somtimes complicated character sequences.

- Install Welcome Headers plugin - Does a great job of converting lurkers to new members and encourages new members to post

- Create a “Members only” section that is only accessible to members (duh) to help encourage registration and an introduction forum for new members to tell a little about themselves.

- Add a .htaccess file to the root directory of the website that contains the following info:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^(www\.|$) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ http://www.%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

(If you don’t have a .htaccess file in your rood directory, simply open up notepad, put in the above info and save as “.htaccess”)

This code will help Google “canonicalize” a url (Google Engineer Matt Cutts on URL canonicalization). The code in the .htaccess file makes your website default to the www. version so that if someone types in yoursite.com it will redirect to www.yoursite.com.

I thought this would be the best time to cover the backend settings and plugins I use for every forum launch as the info is fresh in my mind because I just launched my newest forum:

WorldofWarcraftBoard.com

My backend changes and pre launch steps are a great starting point for your forum; however, I almost always use additional plugins and mods on forums that I launch. I customize each community to fit the needs of the members. For example, on the World of Warcraft forum I added a plugin that allows you to place [item] tags around an item from the game and if a user hovers over the item it will pop up and show detailed stats. It’s a nice way of adding more depth to the community. The goal behind a successful forum launch is to try and create the best possible environment for your community to flourish and by following the steps I outlined above and in previous posts your will be well on your way to success.

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