| LED Digest 1957: Beware of Bogus Blogs |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 14, 2005 Issue #1957 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Are Site Forums Worthwhile? ==-- ~ Simon McArdle ~ Martha Retallick --== Beware of Internet-centricity ==-- ~ Mekhong Kurt ~ Bill Davison --== Spidering iFrame Content? ==-- ~ Dave Mead ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Bogus Blogs ===-- ~ Tom Aman ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: Simon McArdle Subject: Forums > In 2005 is it worth it having a forum on your site? - Richard Graham, LED 1955 Good question Richard. We have been using a forum on our site for about a year now. We use it for clients to post questions in pre-sales, client testimonials and emergency contact. For us it has been a huge success. We have loads and loads of client testimonials plus a great FAQ for our potential clients to read through. We have found that the pre-sales forums are our busiest. People get answers to questions that they themselves wanted to ask and also the opportunity to ask a question that has not been asked before. This alone saves everyone, us and the client a massive amount of time. Emergency contact gets used as well. In this day and age of failing email this has been very useful. Most clients will use this if they have not had contact from us. It normally turns out to be an email issue and through the forum it is resolved very quickly. The icing on the cake for us though is our existing clients selling for us through our testimonials page. This is a great tool because potential clients get to read the views of our existing clients and it gives them that extra feeling of security. We integrated our site in to our existing look and feel so the potential and existing clients have a feel uniformity throughout our web site. This maintains the professionalism of the site. With regards to security you have hit the nail on the head. It is a problem with all forums. They are targets for spammers and for hackers alike. We use PHPBB forum on our site and it is supported by a huge development community. This means that if a vulnerability is discovered the hole is plugged pretty quick. You do need to keep your eye on this though as upgrades can be difficult if you have lots of hacks installed. With regards to spammers we delete their emails fast and ban the IP address from the forum. We also have a couple of great hacks installed that allow us to block the bots and get notification of new posts to the forum. In addition to this the forum also benefits us in the search engines. Our clients are posting lovely "on target search terms" that we like to be found by. The search engines eat up all these lovely words and in turn more people find us through our forums. So... "In 2005 is it worth it having a forum on your site?" You bet it is :) Regards, Simon McArdle The Logo Company http://thelogocompany.net ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Martha Retallick Subject: Forums There have been times when I thought about offering a forum on one of my websites. And I've also helped Web design clients set up forums on their sites. It seems that one of two things tend to happen with forums: 1. They are all but ignored by the intended audience. You've probably been to these boards -- the last post went up six months ago. And the forum has a grand total of five members, even though it's been around since 1996. 2. They're heavily trafficked, but by shhh-pammers and people who just learned a new curse word. And they need to share with it anyone and everyone. In the first instance, and I'm dealing with a client who's having this problem right now, you probably underestimated the time it would take to promote the forum and keep the discussions going. You also have to be sure that the discussions stay on track. And did I mention that you're not getting paid for any of this time and effort? In the second instance, you, the forum board owner, must spend a lot of time playing Internet Janitor. And, once again, you're not getting paid to clean up the mess that other people leave behind. If you're one of those rare website owners who can monetize your forum, more power to you. Unfortunately, most of us have found that forums tend to devour time and energy that we'll never get back. > There are a few sick people who feel they > have to ruin every forum they can find. - Barbara Radisavljevic, LED 1956 Need to get inside the heads of those Internet Goons who are so intent on wrecking forums for anyone and everyone? This article provides some valuable clues: http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0405/sajak041205.php3 Enjoy! Martha Retallick "The Passionate Postcarder" http://www.postcardmarketingsecrets.com -------- new post - new topic --------- From: Mekhong Kurt Subject: Internet-centricity > Out there in the Real World, there are still a lot of > businesses that aren't on the Internet, and, truth > be told, they don't have to be. - Martha Retallick, LED 1955 Martha "The Passionate Postcarder" makes a valid point in her posting in LED 1955 that not every business needs an Internet presence. She emphasizes the human side of the business equation. Her yard man obviously seeks, with apparent success, a limited market: a neighborhood. Nothing wrong with that, particularly since he seems to be quite successful. What, however, of businesses with broader horizons than a single neighborhood, Martha? Can any business with a customer base beyond a single immediate neighborhood dare not to have an Internet presence? For that matter, were your yard man wish to expand his business throughout an entire city or area, could he walk the streets, pen and paper in hand -- only? I would guess not. Mekhong Kurt Bangkok, Thailand ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Bill Davison Subject: Internet-centricity I found numerous problems with websites for small businesses. Here are just a few: 1. Many designers have too high an opinion of themselves and sneer at any less than multi-thousand clients. 2. Many clients have been "taken to the cleaners" with the promise of instant riches if only they can get their website a high ranking in search engines. Nothing could be more false and dishonest. 3. While the internet is truly worldwide, most small businesses ARE NOT! Therefore, they are looking for better methods to reach a local market. 4. Some clients such as local realtors, need constant maintenance. The greedy designer immediately visualizes beeg bucks for customized huge databases. Well guess what? (a) they don't really need it (b) they can't afford it and (c) you haven't just scared the pants off one client but... everyone else in the whole brokerage! 5. Maintenance fees for such clients should be priced not "what the market will bear" (simply translated to mean "what's the maximum I can get this sucker to pay me") but affordable. 6. Although search engines steer mainly to international exposure, they have miserably failed to reach local small business needs. Thankfully, a few are beginning to recognize their ignorance. Unfortunately, many IT schools apparently don't require Economics101 which would have taught them that 85% of this nation's economy is based upon SMALL local businesses. Bill Davison bizwebpage.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dave Mead Subject: iFrame > I don't know whether or not IFRAME content is spidered. - Will Bontrager, LED 1955 Search engines can, and do, spider content in iFrames. But if the content in the iFrame is from another web site (not always the case) then that spider is now on their site and is spidering them. You've just lost out. This goes for normal frames as well. Spiders just follow links and look at text - nothing else. If your site / page is reliant on external content displayed in a frame make sure you put some keyword-rich content in the <.noframes> tag that tells people with old or text browsers and the spiders what it is that's within that frame. That should help and is a best practice as well. Regards, Dave Mead Website Design | SEO | Consulting DMWebsites.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Tom Aman Subject: Bogus blogs and other phishing schemes I ran across an article on bogus blogs this morning. A quote from the article says: "Websense said that as of Tuesday, there are 210 active bogus blogs. The company also notes that the average lifespan of one of these blogs is three or four days." A bit of a scary trend. The whole article can be seen at http://snipurl.com/e05c [news.com] Also, at the end of the article are links to other articles worth reading (lastest twist on phishing techniques, cross site scripting and DNS poisoning). Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2005 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Sleep and dream is the little heaven on Earth. |
