Fighting forum spam

// June 3rd, 2011 // 1 Comment » // australianwebmaster.com

australianwebmaster.com is still challenging me.

The last lot of changes I made to regain control haven’t really had the desired result and it got to the point where I questioned whether I had the time to take up the fight.

Fortunately a member offered to help out and the fight back has begun.

The obvious spam has always been under control using a number of anti-spam mods that detect new members dropping links, etc however they don’t address the poor quality “me too” and “thanks for the advice” style posts which really made the site look trashy.

There have been a couple of major changes recently.

Firstly there is a much stricter stance on post quality. If the post doesn’t add value it’s gone and the member gets an infraction.

Another change is that I have added the vbStopForumSpam vBulletin mod which will check all registrations against a massive list of almost 4 million reported spammers. This is done by using the StopForumSpam system which allows forum owners to report forum spammers. The mod now checks this list for all registrations and also allow me to submit spammers to this database. It blocks 100s of sign ups each day. It remains to be seen if it blocks legitimate users.

The other major change is that I made the site NOFOLLOW for all external links. Not a major fan of this change however hopefully members will understand that it’s necessary and that there is more to a forum than just getting back links. I do have a whitelist for certain members and supporters.

The above changes are likely to have a massive effect on my traffic however quality beats quantity.

Regaining control of forum

// February 24th, 2011 // 1 Comment » // australianwebmaster.com

As I mentioned in my previous post, statistically my australianwebmaster.com forum was going really well, however diving in to the statistics showed a different story.

For me the goal was always to increase post activity. During the building stage I always aimed for each area of the forum to have a “last post” either showing Today or Yesterday. After a while the site activity built and I had met this goal – in fact I was receiving up to 200 posts a day. The problem was that many of these posts were of low quality.

This meant that the people I actually WANT on the forum were frustrated by the crappy posts and simply gave up. This is not what I wanted.

To solve the problem I had to make the site less appealing to people just wanting backlinks. I figured I could either make external links nofollow or remove signatures.

I didn’t like the idea of making the site a nofollow so all I could do was remove signatures, however I decided to provide users with a backlink on their web site as listed on the profile. I felt that this was a good compromise – I could limit links to 1 per user. Also showing their link wasn’t too complicated so it was fairly straight forward to change.

As soon as I announced the changes I had a few people come back and state that they thought the change was a great idea and confirmed that the reason why the no longer visited the forum was because of the low quality posts. So I was happy.

I did however then get a few negative comments.

I decided to re-instate signatures however only for people who were contributing to the forum.

The problem is how do you do this. Any system that relies on post count is encouraging people to make posts – and this generally means low quality posts. Post length was also not appropriate – I have people quoting other web sites (eg. articles) which were nice and long however doesn’t mean that they were a “quality” post.

The solution I’ve implemented for now is to make people apply for a signature. Not too sure how it will go but I think it’s worth a try.

2010 Review of australianwebmaster.com

// February 8th, 2011 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com

A web site is a bit like a child who’s growing up – looking at them every day you don’t really notice the changes however when you compare a photo taken 12 months apart the changes are clear.

I recently sat down to look at the statistics of australianwebmaster.com. Thanks to Google Analytics it’s quite easy to compare the site over the 12 months and analyse where the improvements have been and try to see where the site is heading.

Lately I’ve noticed a high number of members logging in each day and quite a lot of activity. As a forum owner this is what you want to see and although I wasn’t spending as much time on the site as I normally do I felt that the site must be working well.

Going through the statistics has given me a different perspective. I’m certainly glad I went through the exercise because it has made something very clear to me and changed my entire way of thinking about the site.

Firstly the good news – all the statistics were positive, meaning that everything had improved:
Visits – +26.59%
Unique vistors – +38.52%
Pageviews – +33.02%

Compared to previous years this growth is quite poor however as long as there is growth I’m satisfied – I would have liked to see bigger growth however 2010 was probably the least active I had been on the site so it probably reflects that.

Now the bad news was the country of origin for my visitors. Compared to 2009, my Australian visitors had declined by 15.5% but vistors from India had more than doubled. Australia was still the highest, but only just (less than 1%).

If the forum was a global site then this isn’t an issue, however as the site is AUSTRALIANwebmaster.com this was an issue and I had to do something. So I had to decide what was important to the site – high activity but with low quality costs, or lower activity with higher quality posts.

I will detail what I’ve done in another post.

For the record, at the moment the forum stats are:
Threads: 4,780, Posts: 30,488, Members: 8,628

Australian Webmaster Update

// August 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com

One of my objectives of this blog is to track my progress of my various projects.

I was just looking at the statistics for australianwebmaster.com when I realized that last week the site received it’s highest amount of traffic since I began using Google Analytics on the site!

The forum has now got 3,990 threads, 22,293 posts and 5,578 members.

Back in January the site had 3,584 members. Works out to be about 10 new members a day over the past 7 months.

It still gets spammed every day however it’s still rewarding to see the place growing, even if it is slower than I’d like.

I still haven’t applied the vBulletin update which I’m concerned about because of how many releases behind I am however I’m dreading the effort required – and the potential issues I may face.

In the past week I’ve added an Australian Web Hosting specific section to the site – need to try to find a way of promoting it to hosting companies.

Weekly review – 11/Jan

// January 11th, 2010 // No Comments » // webmasterblog.com.au

Last week I concentrated on my www.webmasterblog.com.au site. I am aiming for three posts per week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Last week I posted Top 2009 AU Domain Name Sales, How much is your site worth?, and Does Hosting in Australia Help your SEO?. Earlier today I published a post comparing AU Domain Name Prices.

Traffic is still very low. As part of my monthly Australian Webmaster Forum newsletter I mentioned the site had launched but the response wasn’t great. (The forum is also below normal so I am suspect/hoping people are just still on holidays)

I have set up a link exchange between the site and an Australian domain name forum which has resulted in some traffic.

My next step is to target Australian hosting companies offering them free promotion of any specials they offer. My intention is to publish a “Deals of The Month” post at the beginning of each month. This would get the site’s name out there, support the local Australian hosting market and provide visitors with a source of Australia’s best hosting deals.

Webmaster Blog

// September 11th, 2009 // No Comments » // webmasterblog.com.au

I’ve gone live with another site, www.webmasterblog.com.au, a Webmaster Blog specifically for the Australian market.

Not sure how often I will be able to post to it but I’ve had the domain for a while so I may as well use it.

I wanted to launch with more content however I had researched a list of Australian Web Directories and wanted to get the list out there rather than have it as a draft for god knows how long.

The idea of this site is to give me something to promote which can then publicize the forum. Should be interesting to see how it (and I) goes.

Whoops I did it again

// September 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // webmasterincome.net

You know how I complain about my lack of focus on projects… I bought another web site! For US$30 it seemed too good to pass up.

The site is webmasterincome.net and is based on how to make money online information. Although it’s a fairly new site it contains a decent amount of content, including an eBook on Yahoo Answers which was promoted on Digital Point.

It obviously needs periodic posts however I am hoping that it will it will attract traffic through search engines and build up over time. At this stage it’s getting NO search engine traffic so I will send it some links and see what happens.

australianwebmaster.com update

// August 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com

Australian Webmaster continues to be my main focus and has had a great past week – my traffic has been consistently higher than normal which is really great to see.

The monthly newsletters seem to be doing the trick of reminding people about the site. I’ve also proceeded with the “Site Of The Month” competition.

These two things have probably caused the recent traffic spike but hopefully it will continue!

I’ve put on two additional moderators however they aren’t big contributors unfortunately, but they can approve moderated posts in those times I can’t which is great.

I still need to get the word out about the site and at this stage I can only see this happening by getting out there and getting involved in other forums and blogs. It’s a catch-22 though, if I’m out marketing the site activity can drop off and then the people that my marketing does attract see a site with little activity!

I think I have to do something though to take it to the next level.

and we’re back…

// July 6th, 2009 // No Comments » // australianwebmaster.com

In my last goal post I mentioned I’d be a little quiet for a bit – well, it took a bit longer than expected!

I was actually repainting my office so the computers were all packed away for a couple of weeks and I was just doing the odd bit of maintenance using my laptop. We finished painting about a week ago but then I had end of financial year and had to update the accounts so I stayed offline for a little longer to get it all out of the way.

Have a few things to finish off in the office (door handle, rehang whiteboard, etc) but I trying to be productive again!

What’s new?

I got another good ad sale! I was happy after my first one but then they came back for another! Ever since buying australianwebmaster.com I was wanting to buy vBSEO but at US$150 I didn’t want to spend that much on what is a bit of a gamble – with these two ad sales I decided to take the plunge.

Will need to wait for Google’s next PR update to see whether it changes the PR.

I’ve made a few other minor changes to Australian Webmaster and kept up with the monthly newsletter.

Nothing else much has happened…

I now need to sit down and map out my next priorities now I should be getting back in to things.

Mid-term Goals

// May 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Personal Goals, diyweb.com.au

I intended doing more of a opinion piece today however have something on my mind…

One of my self-assigned tasks for this week was to plan diyweb.com.au.

I have given it some thought however I’m stuck. The way I see it, I have two options.

Option 1 is to do what I said, turn it in to a site with resources on how to set up your own web site. So cover domain names, hostings, CMS (e.g. WordPress) and how to maintain the site. I could use some video (screen casting) showing all this stuff.

This option could provide revenue by selling hosting (either via my own reseller account or affiliate), template affiliates, etc. I could also offer to do all the messy stuff for a fee (but it would only be a small fee I’d say).

Option 2 is to sell preconfigured custom WordPress blogs which people can then self maintain and extend. This was another idea I had for offering locally, initially under a different site. Costs would need to be kept as low as possible as the market would be small businesses starting out online.

Both options have their pluses and minuses.

I feel the main deciding factor is which one will help me meet my goals, and this is where I’ve realised that I don’t have my goals really planned.

I know my long term goal, but what’s my mid-term goals?

Long term I know I want to be able to replace my offline salary with an online income but I now need to work out how best to get there.

In the case of diyweb.com.au I have the opportunity to setup a simple site which can give me an experience of launching a site and provide some income, or it might be an opportunity to start developing that income which has the potential to replace my offline salary.

The third option is to do both – go option 1 initially and develop it in to option 2 (maybe using a different domain?).

Hmmm…. back to the drawing board!