I have finally finished my recommended page filled with publisher programs, forum products and webhosting solutions that I am currently using or have used before. For those of you that may just be subscribed to my RSS feed I am writing a post about it so that you can read the page.

Click above to read the page or you can simply continue to read on:

The list below contains various publisher programs, forum products and webhosting solutions that I have used before and highly recommend to other forum owners and bloggers. I have had a lot of experience working on the net and have only listed programs or companies I have had first hand experience working with. The list will be updated as I find more great programs or companies that I can recommend to my readers.

Publisher Programs:

Google Adsense:

One of the best ways to monetize your website is with Google Adsense. And if you don’t already know, Google Adsense serves up contextual ads simply by placing the code on your website. You can choose from a slew of different ad sizes and customize the color scheme as much as you want. I use Google Adsense on nearly every forum and website I own because it does so well and it’s so easy to use. It’s also one of the easiest publisher programs to get approved for. So if you’re starting up a small forum and looking for a few ways to pay the hosting bills, try Google Adsense.



Text-Link-Ads:

Text Link Ads is just that; a text link advertising program. The approval process is a little more strict as they require you to be at least a PR3, if not higher to be approved. If at first you’re denied you can always call them up and ask to get in ;). The great thing about TLA is that it requires absolutely no work after the code is inserted on your website. You don’t have to change link colors to see what works better, change ad formats, ad placement locations or anything else that you often times have to do with other programs to improve your earnings. With TLA, simply input the code and they take care of the rest. TLA has a marketplace where advertisers can find your website and then purchase monthly links on it. In exchange for selling the links for you TLA takes 50% of the proceeds from each link sale, but I think this is a fair amount. I wouldn’t have sold any of these links by doing nothing if it weren’t for TLA ;). This is one of the easiest ways to add an additional unobtrusive revenue stream without sacrificing a lot of space on your website or annoying your users with ugly ads.

Sign up for text-link-ads

Kontera:

Kontera’s “Content Link” is another publisher program that an help make money on forums. Kontera’s code “reads” your webpage and then applies advertisements to various keywords found on the page content. It adds two underlines to the keyword that when hovered over pops up an advertisement. This program is a little more intrusive, but helps provide an additional revenue stream without having to sacrifice any of your previous advertising space.

Sign up for Kontera

Forum Products:

vBulletin:

vBulletin is the leading forum software on the net and in my opinion the best solution out there. A single license is $160, with multi license discounts that go into affect as you purchase more licenses. I use vBulletin on every forum I run and have had an incredible experience using it. The community of webmasters that run this software is huge. If you have any trouble using vBulletin and need some help you can ask at the official forums, or at vBulletin.org (which is also home to a huge variety of sweet forum modifications). vBulletin is the only forum software I use now and the only one I recommend using.

Click to get vBulletin

vBSEO:

vBSEO is a plugin that you install onto your vBulletin forum that drastically improves vBulletin’s ability to be indexed in the search engines and help provide search engine traffic. If you’re interested in reading more about how vBSEO performs check out my case studies. vBSEO has helped to send me more search engine traffic than I previously received before installing the plugin and I highly recommend the product.

Click to get vBSEO

vBskinworks:

vBskinworks is a great source for high quality vBulletin skins. It’s important to differentiate your forum from other forums and one step in that direction is to ditch the standard vBulletin skin that comes with the license and get something that will better fit the focus of your forum. I currently use a vBskinworks forum skin on my forum WorldofWarcraftBoard.com. Another advantage of going with a premium skin is that you don’t have to worry about updating your vBulletin skins by yourself after a new version of vBulletin comes out. You can simply download a new skin package and upload that to your site. vBskinworks also has an amazing deal going on right now where if you buy one skin you get another skin for free!

Click to check out vBskinworks vBulletin skins

Extreme Pixels:

Extreme Pixels also offers premium high quality skins for a wide variety of forum software including vBulletin. The first skins I ever bought for vBulletin were from Extreme Pixels. I used one on GamingVidz.com for nearly two years before I hired a designer to create a custom skin. They currently have a deal where if you buy two skins you get a third for free.

Click to check out Extreme Pixels forum skins

Webhosting solutions:

Site5:

I used Site5 shared hosting for nearly two years before switching to a dedicated solution. With Site5, I was able to host 4 forums with around 100 people active at once and about 10 other websites for less than $20 a month. Site5 is a shared webhosting provider which means two things: Hosting is inexpensive, but you have to share your server with others. I highly recommend going with Site5 if you’re just starting a forum or if you’re looking to move to an inexpensive host and don’t have a ton of traffic. Site5 also has a lot of hosting specials all the time as well.

Click to check out Site5

Soft Layer:

I currently use a dedicated server from Soft Layer to host all of my vBulletin forums, blogs and miscellaneous websites. I can’t remember when my server has ever gone down with Soft Layer. My server loads are really low and I have plenty of room to grow on this server. If you’re looking for a dedicated hosting solution I recommend checking out Soft Layer. When you speak with the salesperson try and get a few services thrown in for free or the monthly price dropped down a little. I was able to get a second hard drive for free and an upgraded port.

Click to check out Soft Layer

Platinum Server Management:

I currently use Platinum Server Management to keep my server up, secure and help with any other miscellaneous tasks. I know that part of the reason why I haven’t had any problems with my Soft Layer dedicated server is because of Platinum Server Management. I began my search for a server management company while I was in the process of picking out my new dedicated server. When I was speaking with the Soft Layer salesperson she had recommended that I check out PSM because many Soft Layer customers had great things to say about them. I checked out the company and found that PSM only manages servers with cPanel and that just so happens to be the control panel software I’ve been using for a few years. Besides, if they only work with one conrol panel software (cPanel in this case) then they must know it really well AND PSM was only $29 a month! When I was looking around at some other server management companies she had recommended I found many prices in the $60 to $100 a month range, so to find a service that I really needed for only $29 a month was a steal. I highly recommend Platinum Server Management if you use cPanel and want help administering the server, keeping it secure, performing server migrations and more.

Click her to check out Platinum Server Management

Again, this list will continue to grow as I find more great companies to purchase products or services from and try out new publisher programs to use on my forums and blogs. I hope this list helps you out.

Did this list help you?

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I’ve finished transferring every site from my old shared hosting account to my new dedicated server with SoftLayer. I would have finished earlier, but the sites I had left to transfer were small and did not require a lot of server resources to run, so I wasn’t as worried about transferring those sites as I was about transferring my big vBulletin forums. Either way, I’m done with the server transfer and think I’ll close out my old hosting account now. I may see if PlatinumServerManagement can set up a system to send backup files from my dedicated server onto my old hosting account or I may just stick with their current system of backing up files.

I have only experienced some downtime twice and both times for only five minutes. I received automatic email updates when the server was not responding from SoftLayer and then automatic updates from PlatinumServerManagement as they fixed the problem. I get a lot of satisfaction out of seeing problems resolved without involving me to get involved to take care of them

If you want to read my first two parts of my server transfer experience check them out here:

Moving to a new server part 1

Moving to a new server part 2

Now that the server transfer is completely out of the way I have a bunch of stuff planned to work on, including a lot of updates to this blog.

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This a continuation of my server transfer post from a long over due shared hosting account to my new dedicated hosting server at softlayer. Read part one on my move to the new server here.

I have successfully finished the server migration for most of my vBulletin forums:

GamingVidz.com
HaloBoards.com
XboxLiveArcade.com
WorldofWarcraftBoard.com

I plan to transfer a few more of my sites (and this blog) later on this week. Overall the server migration was relatively smooth. The transfer was easy because my old recommended shared host Site5.com was using a modified version of cPanel (Pretty much just a different look) and my new dedicated server also uses cPanel, so the migration was easy. I simply had to email Site5 about generating a full backup for each site (They had that feature disabled so I had to request each backup to be genereated for me) and then I’d contact my new server management company Platinum Server Management with ftp information to my old shared hosting account. Platinum Server Management was then able to restore each site for me on my dedicated server one by one so that I didn’t have to bother with actually doing it. I then just changed the DNS information at my softlayer control panel and with my registrar GoDaddy. The DNS migration often happened immediately after changing my information and was much faster than I thought it might take. GoDaddy states that it may take 24 - 48 hours for the DNS migration to complete but it actually happened almost instantly for a few of the site transfers. The thing that made the server migration much easier was not only by having my server management company PSM do the actual migration, but the fact that both my old host and my new host were using the same admin control panel software - cPanel. I highly recommend that if you find yourself in the situation of outgrowing your old server and must change over to a new server that you use the same control panel software. It makes things much easier to transfer that way.

If you are nervous about doing the server transfer yourself for fear of losing data or don’t know how to administer a server, find a good server management company like Platinum Server Management and have them do it for you. I began my search for a server management company while I was in the process of picking out my new server. When I was speaking with the Soft Layer salesperson she had recommended that I check out PSM because many Soft Layer customers had great things to say about them. I checked out the company and found that PSM only manages servers with cPanel and that just so happens to be my control panel software I’ve worked with for a few years. Besides, if they only work with one conrol panel software (cPanel in this case) then they must know it really well AND PSM was only $29 a month! When I was looking around at some other server migration companies she had recommended I found many prices in the $60 to $100 a month range, so to find a service that I really needed for only $29 a month was a steal. All of these factors helped to make my decision but I must admit the price and the 30 day money back guarantee helped seal the deal. I highly recommend Platinum Server Management if you use cPanel and want help administering the server, keeping it secure, performing server migrations and more.

I’ll keep you posted on how they work out too since I know how hard it is to make a decision on moving to a new hosting company and select a server management company. I’m glad that the largest sites have been transferred without issue and have been very pleased with the new server’s response times. The server loads in vBulletin’s control panel have been really low for my forums and that helps to make for speedy load times. I’m glad it’s nearly done though

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I’ve found several fellow webmasters that although they buy domains from GoDaddy, they have never used a domain promo code! Say what you will about GoDaddy, I personally chose them early on because of how large and well known the company was. I was previously burned by a “buy one year of hosting and get a free domain” deal several years ago when I first got into websites but I’ll save that for another day. Anyway, I have most of my domains at GoDaddy and always use the following promo code before checking out:

OYH3

It drops $2 off a .com renewal or new domain purchase and I’ve been using it for nearly a year on every .com domain I buy. I think the final total for the domain comes out to $7.20 after ICANN fee.

I actually got into using the GoDaddy promo codes by reading this thread on NamePros

There are also other domain renewal codes found in that thread for different TLD’s and it’s constantly updated too.

Have you used promo codes at GoDaddy?

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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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“One of the many benefits that FeedBurner publishers will enjoy now that FeedBurner is part of the Google family is a little something we like to call, “more for free!” Beginning today, two of FeedBurner’s previously for-pay services, TotalStats and MyBrand, will be free. Not in the sense of soaring high above the clouds or recently sprung from the hoosegow, but free like you’ll no longer gladly be billed on Tuesday for a burned feed today. We suspect this will be welcome news to the 450,000+ of you using many of our other free services, but understanding that your feed is your feed, you will need to activate these newly freed-up services in order to partake in their awesomeness.”

If you haven’t read about it yet, two previously paid features at feedburner are now free! So I set up my free feedburner account and created a posts and commments feed at feedburner. I then used the wordpress plugin feedsmith to forward all of my blogs RSS feeds to my newly created feeds. The whole process took less than fifteen minutes to read about, install and set up. What I like the most about feedburner is the ability to view highly detailed stats for free. I’m not sure if I’ll use their “MyBrand” free feature yet or not, as I feel fine simply using a URL at feedburner; however, I may change the feed at a later date.

Hey, now that I’ve mentioned my new feed why don’t you subscribe to it?

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As I’m sure many of you know, it’s difficult to launch new websites, manage the old ones and come up with new ideas to improve a site all while holding down a full time job. I personally work as a game tester at Microsoft (living the dream huh?), and have to commute to work for 3 hours a day round trip. I know just how tough it is to balance a full time work schedule, a marriage and find time to work on my websites. I will be making the move to full time web publisher eventually, but I haven’t figured out a time table for it yet.

For those of us that still hold down full time jobs while running forums or websites on the side you may ask yourself all the time, “How can I find more time to work on my websites?” Well, I am going to give you a peak into how I get website work done and hopefully you’ll be able to learn something from me. As I write this post, I’m currently sitting at my work desk after arriving 50 minutes early. I used to come into work earlier back when I first started this job 9 months ago, but slowly started leaving later and later until I got to the point where I would be late to work if one section of my commute took longer than scheduled. So I’ve decided to start coming to work early again so I can spend all of that time working on my websites. If you work at an office, I’d highly recommend doing this, you’d be suprised by how much you can focus on your website work by coming in early when most of your co-workers are still asleep or driving to work. If you commute in high traffic areas, you may also receive the benefit of avoiding some traffic that would have otherwise kept you on the road longer, thus wasting more of your time. The key is to try and find times to work on your websites that complement the type of person you are. As an example, I’ve found that I’m moving towards more of a morning person now that I’m out of college and so I find that it isn’t that hard to get up extra early for work knowing that I can use that time to work on my websites.

Another way I’ve found success in getting website work done has been by writing lists of work I need to do on a site by site basis. After having a detailed list, it’s easy to pick out the items of most importance and start working from there. I also don’t let myself stop working on a task until it’s finished. I’ve found that it’s important to never stop in the middle of a task because I often spend a fair amount of time figuring out where I left off and what left to finish it, so I make sure to avoid starting a task that I can’t finish within my allotted work time.

How do you find the time to work on websites while holding down a full time job?

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There are only 5 days left to get one of 5 free 1600 microsoft point cards with the opening promotion on XboxLiveArcade.com. I just purchased all 5 of them and will be ready to announce the winners on June 1st. Anyone that registers and meets the eligibility requirements on the site can win. Here are the following requirements:

1. You must have at least 25 posts and 3 threads to qualify for the free cards that will be randomly given away. (You may not spam to achieve this.)
2. You can only have one account on the site (do not create multiple accounts in an attempt to increase your chances at winning. This can be tracked, so don’t try to circumvent the system).
3. At the end of May I’ll search our member database for those that qualify and the winners will be randomly selected and contacted via the private message system with the key card code for the 1600 Microsoft Points.

So once you reach that 25 posts (3 of which must be threads) you’ll be eligible to win one.

The contest has run for the last few weeks in April and will end on May 31st. At the time of this writing, XboxliveArcade.com has 1,181 posts. It’s safe to say that this forum was successfully launched, although we still need to focus on providing weekly reviews of XBLA games to ensure people keep coming back for our content.

What do you think of my forum contest? Would you have done anything differently? What could have been improved? Write a comment and let me know.

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