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I finally was able to buy a XenForo license. Now I've gotta wait like two hours to upload?! Saturday nights must be really busy or something, because this is only like 60MB. And thus begins yet another grand, and new adventure!

Hi [uSERGROUP=2]@everyone[/uSERGROUP] ! This is just a small update, but I wanted to inform you all that I've taken the time to simplify the forum layout names slightly. Additionally, you will now see a new activity feed on the top of the forum, quickly informing you of new content such as new posts, new threads, forum promotion, marketplace offers, resources and anything else featured. Enjoy. [ATTACH type=full" size="2190x744]1610[/ATTACH]

I was just cleaning out my emails when I saw this random link. I had no idea what it was, so I clicked on it to see if it was important and fell upon this beautiful place.

Social proof refers to organic content such as feedback, reviews, testimonials, or comments posted by real customers on public platforms like social media, blogs and forums. These are not paid content and the people who post are common people and not paid influencers or marketers. Since this comes as a voluntary act from a common individual, it offers validation and builds trust, which can dramatically increase your conversions. Positive reviews can boost your sales overnight, while negative ones can drive away potential customers. Therefore, you need to encourage your satisfied clients to leave honest reviews and share their experiences to build credibility and attract new buyers.

I'm enjoying your posts with all the internet news/trends Cpvr, interesting stuff!

American Sports Forum is a passionate online community for fans of all sports, with a strong focus on American leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, and NCAA. But our love for sports goes far beyond the U.S. borders. We also cover major international tournaments such as the FIFA World Cup, ICC Cricket World Cup, UEFA Champions League, Rugby World Cup, Olympic Games, and more. Whether you're into football, basketball, cricket, tennis, baseball, or motorsports, this is the place to connect with fellow fans, share insights, and join engaging discussions. From game-day talk and trade rumors to fantasy leagues and historic debates, the conversation never stops. Join American Sports Forum today and be part of a diverse, global sports community that brings fans together from all walks of life. https://americansports.online/index.php

Hi all! I'd like to announce two changes in our Staff team. First of all, [mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] has been promoted to Admin. A well deserved promotion since cpvr has been nothing but very supportive and online every single day since our opening. Congrats buddy! Secondly, [mention=48]Nomad[/mention] has been promoted to Moderator, but more specifically will be in charge of the community more often by having the title Community Manager. We are looking forward to see what you'll bring. :) Congrats you two.

I had to laugh at this, it was my first thought when I read this. I will admit, I have not been happy with X at all ever since it was taken over and rarely use it now.

Let it burn :ROFLMAO:

That's correct. PPC can also have a direct influence on your search results as well. I haven't used PPC advertising myself, but it's something that I hope to explore in the near future. https://www.semrush.com/blog/ppc-and-seo-working-together/ https://www.webfx.com/seo/learn/does-ppc-affect-seo/ Does PPC affect SEO? When you ask this question, you may expect a direct yes or no answer. The truth of the matter is that PPC doesn’t directly impact SEO, but it does indirectly impact SEO. There are many indirect occurrences that result from using a combination of PPC and SEO initiatives. If you want to maximize your results with your marketing plan, it’s best to use these two methods in conjunction with one another. So, how does PPC impact SEO? 1. PPC ads allow you to maximize real estate in search results When you run PPC ads, they appear at the top of the search results — and people see PPC ads first when they conduct searches. Coupled with SEO, PPC ads help your business occupy more territory in search engine results pages (SERPs). If someone skips past the ads and goes to the organic search results, they’ll see your business’s listing there, too. This creates a double exposure. Someone is exposed to both your paid listing and your organic listing. Ultimately, this maximizes the chances that people will click one of your listings and visit your company’s website to learn more. The double exposure makes your audience “biased” towards your business. They assume that, by seeing your business multiple times in the results, you must offer reputable products and services. Combining PPC and SEO is extremely valuable because it guides more traffic to your site and encourages people to engage with your business. 2. PPC helps you discover more valuable organic SEO keywords Keyword targeting is a crucial part of your PPC and SEO strategies. If you want to appear in more relevant search results, you must target the right keywords. Since SEO takes time to show results, it can be difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your keyword targeting right off the bat. Fortunately, PPC allows you to see immediate results, so you can pinpoint which keywords are driving traffic and which ones are less effective. This allows you to optimize your SEO targeting to drive even better results. Using PPC keyword data to inform your SEO campaigns helps you understand what your customers want and the keywords they use. Instead of waiting to see if your SEO keyword optimizations drive results, you can use PPC data to find out quicker and make necessary tweaks to your SEO campaigns. 3. PPC creates brand awareness that leads people to click organic listings PPC ads drive clicks to your website. When someone clicks on your PPC ad, they go to your landing page and learn information about your business. In some cases, people will click on your ad, get distracted, and leave. This may seem discouraging, but people will gain awareness of your brand via PPC ads. When they search for similar products or services in the future, they will remember your business — and they will be more likely to click your organic search listings over competitor’s listings. As leads get more familiar with your business, they’re more likely to engage and click on your organic content in the future. This leads to an increase in site traffic, and ultimately conversions, for your business. So, PPC ads build brand awareness that can lead to organic search traffic in the future. 1. Combining PPC and SEO increases visibility in search results When you use PPC and SEO together, you increase your brand’s visibility. As we’ve stated before, seeing both a PPC listing and organic SEO listing has a huge impact on your audience. They assume that your business fits the bill because they keep seeing you in the results. Increased visibility creates more opportunities for your website to earn traffic. You’ll drive more valuable leads to your page and help your page rank higher in the results. 3. PPC data can improve your SEO content In general, what works for PPC typically works for SEO. Since SEO takes time to show results, you can use PPC to test and optimize parts of your SEO campaign. For example, testing headings for your PPC campaigns provides you with insight into the title tags for your SEO campaigns. You can see which titles drive valuable traffic for your business — and it’s a great way to help you figure out the right title for your SEO pages. You can test other elements, like meta descriptions and page content, to see how your audience reacts to them. This will help you put out the best content on your website. PPC is a great opportunity for you to test your site content to produce the best organic listing for your business.

I think so. I truly believe we’ll see a rise back to forums in the near future. It may be in a year, two or three. But it will happen. I’ve seen them decline, rise and fall. As long as community owners focus on the postive things and not so much negative, forums will always serve their purpose. There are many avenues that forums cover that other sites don’t. There are niche based where social media sites aren’t. We don’t follow algorithms nor trending topics. That’s the main thing. Forums are knowledge bases and critical to the internet. Without them, the internet wouldn’t be so powerful like it is today.

Greetings [uSERGROUP=2]@everyone[/uSERGROUP] ! It’s voting time! We've received some fantastic submissions this month, and now it’s your chance to help us crown May’s Site of the Month. Take a look at the forums entered, and vote for the one you think deserves the spotlight. :D [HEADING=2]How to Vote:[/HEADING] Review the entries in the poll above. In good sports, vote for any other but your own submission. [HEADING=2]Prizes:[/HEADING] A Banner Advertisement below the original post of every thread for one month (max size: 728x90 - must supply one). A Sticky Thread Advertisement for one month. Exclusively featured on our SOTM box in the header. Exclusively featured on Directory. Free Content order 25 threads. Advertised on different communities. Let the best site win, and thanks to everyone who submitted their incredible forums this month. Good luck to all! :) https://jcodesresources.com https://www.redd3ad.com/ https://www.iijm.com/ https://netpub.forumotion.com/ https://2tonwaffle.forum/ https://poker.community/ https://paranormalis.com/ https://rpghaven.net/

How to Use Facebook Groups to Actually Grow Your Forum in 2025 Facebook groups are great for quick chats and grabbing attention, but if you want a community that sticks around and really connects, your forum is where it happens, the place for deeper conversations and real relationships. The key is Be helpful, not pushy. Show up, answer questions, drop real value. When people see you’re genuine, they’ll be curious about your forum. Share your forum when it fits. If a topic needs more than a few comments, say something like, “We actually have a whole thread on this over at [forum link]. You’ll find more detailed conversations there.” Give people a reason to make the move. Exclusive content, contests, or threads only on your forum make it worth their time. Get admins in on it. If you can, ask them to pin a post or mention your forum now and then. Admins backing you up makes a big difference. Run events or challenges that start in the group but finish on your forum. It’s a smooth way to get people over without forcing it. Facebook groups get people’s attention, but forums build community. Use groups as your doorway, and let your forum be the home where your audience really grows. Have you utilized facebook groups to drive traffic to your forum? If so, what groups have you utilized to drive traffic to your community? How often do you tend to use them?

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Sweet, I'll have a look. :)

I don't particularly care about having a massive population on my forum. All I want is like between 5 and 20 people posting one to five posts weekly. I want a community or like minded individuals. I believe, that ultimately, that's what we as forum administrators desire.

Jezus, this game is complicated. It's cool. But complicated. :ROFLMAO:

Installing as we speak, and also registered under Aerodynamik. :)

I was browsing r/redditalternatives again like I do from time to time and came across this one called Discuit. It's quite popular already, I don't know if it's as popular as Lemmy is however. I haven't joined yet, but I definitely plan on joining it. Unfortunately it does seem that they don't allow self promotion, which is discouraging. I suppose they don't want people just to join to spam. Still if you want to check it out here's the link. https://discuit.org/

I feel like social proof is important if you have a monetized brand. If you're trying to make money online, then yes, social proof is essential for aiding that. But for a forum or a blog that's not really monetized? Nah. It's likely a waste of time. I'm not looking for reviews before I join a forum. I'm looking for genuine discussions about the topics that I want to talk about. I look for activity and if the forum has the same posts as everyone else. That's what I think.

Cedric submitted a new resource: [FREE] Aurora - Discover the enchanting 'Aurora' theme, a visual masterpiece.

I really like the fact this theme can be light/dark toggled. Are the gradient colors customizable? I like the almost magical color scheme, and may use this theme when I finally get XenForo for my role play site.

Facebook groups are also a mini community in itself, and they can be used as a promotional tactic to drive users onto our forums as well, especially if these particular group owners allow promotional posts. The key is to talk to the owners of these groups and see if promotional posts are allowed. If they are, then by all means, promote your forum. It's not all about being lazy, it's about the effort and going where the users are. If users aren't aware that forums exist, they won't be able to find them. Facebook nor Reddit were able to attract attention without the willingness to go above and beyond to find users, they were able to step out of the box. Every outlet should be utilized in order to bring in users, especially if you're willing to do it. The fact is, you're able to implement OAuth login systems that enable users to join a forum under their Facebook account or their Reddit account, so that's a means to get their users on board. A direct global account would definitely work for every single forum, especially XenForo. However, it probably won't happen anytime soon. Which is why we have to utilize Google's direct login, Facebook's, Twitter's, etc., in order to enable quicker signups on our forums. Users that enjoy forums like long-form content and safer spaces, yes, however, if you search social media, you'll notice that some users actually prefer forums over social media. The fact is, they hang out on social media because their friends are there, but if owners promote on social media, utilize hashtags, and drop important keywords, more content will display on the search engines, which in turn will drive more users to forums. Content on social media is crawlable and indexable by search engines. It also helps to build backlinks to your forum, especially if you're utilizing Bluesky, Threads, Tumblr, or Reddit. This kind of marketing creates extra visibility and publicity. You never know who will see your post and join your forum based on what you say. It pays off in the end. Forums will remain at the forefront of what they do best, serving as knowledge bases and building a real community atmosphere. Social media is designed for quick chatting and reactions. Forums aren't for that, which is why forums are still leading the way. We can't sit around waiting for people to remember forums exist. If we want this space to grow, we’ve got to go where the users are and show them why forums are still worth their time.

I used Forumotion for my first forum. I had no clue what I was doing and I picked phpBB3 as my forum type of choice and the ACP confused the heck out of me. It was a Pokemon ROM hacking community and this was at a time where there were only a few tools to make minor edits. I also had no knowledge of the Pokemon games technical wise at the time. :V

Congratulations on hitting 25k posts! Keep up the good work. The software doesn't make the forum, the content, theme and appealing to your user base does. As long as it reasonats with your users, you've done something right. There has been forums that have hit big board status with phpbb and smf, so it's not just the software. Investing money is critical if you want further growth. Especially if you want something bigger and better for your online community.

This is the first time I've put together a forum specifically for the pleasure of role playing. Usually I'll just add a section for role playing, but my latest creation is going to be an immersive creative writers haven-- assuming that those writers adore magical girls. I've had this idea for a long time, I was just never sure how I wanted to proceed with it, but after dabbling with various role playing directory forums over the past month, I think I figured out a strategy. Whether it'll work, who knows, but I've gotta at least give it a shot, right? I'm eventually going to move over to XenForo like I originally planned-- assuming the forum takes off and I actually get some active members. Otherwise, why bother sinking money into something that's dead, right? At any rate, I'm have fun, and that's all that matters, true? But for right now, I'm just going to use SMF with the Reseller theme, only because it's responsive and looks pretty clean. And I'm pretty sure there are a ton of other improvements that can be done. So why not just try to knock them out in the beginning stage? I'm pretty proud of the site banner. Not bad for using GIMP and not really knowing what I'm doing. Anyway, if anybody's interested you can check out the world of Prismatica: A Magical Girl Role Playing forum

With their new ceo at the helm, I don’t see too many users sticking around Discord too much longer, especially with the introduction of more monetization features. For example, they’re rolling out yet another paywall: I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduce this new feature behind some type of paywall as well. Especially with their nitro system. Their ceo will figure something out to monetize the hell out of Discord.

Go for it. :)

A lot of people start a new forum with much fanfare but sadly most of them cannot run it for a long time. I have been there, so I understand why you are selling. Best of luck for your sale.

It's a shame you have to sell your forum, but life goes that way sometimes. I hope you can find the perfect buyer!

As I said over on Forum Promotion I just wish it would stay offline lol. I'm also glad no one got hurt in the fire.

Every forum is different, and their traffic levels aren’t the same. If you’re seeing 1k–10k daily visits a day on your forum, then it is more than enough to place ads on it, especially for guests viewing. As a forum owner, it is your responsibility to keep your forum sustainable for the long term. If one wants to monetize it by any means, then that’s their obligation to do so. Especially if they’re massively marketing it, launching, advertising it, marketing it everywhere, etc. By all means, I’m not saying flood your forum with ads. I’m saying monetize your forum in a way that you know works well and isn’t annoying. Some forums get good traffic and some don’t. We never know how many forums are performing well in terms of statistics, nor their daily numbers, as these stats aren’t displayed publicly. So if one wants to monetize their forum, go for it. Figure out what works and what doesn’t. Forums can be hobbies, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make a few dollars at the same time. If you can place an affiliate link, a paid advertisement, or a simple ad, even from an annoying ad company, do so. Do something you can use to reinvest into your forum and attract more users in the long run. Anything that helps build your community and makes it grow even more is a worthwhile goal and truthfully, a good idea. In fact, if you can sell a sticky ad, a header link, or maybe even footer links for yearly spots, that’s a good idea too. Just keep everything in mind. We, as forum owners, are meant to keep our projects going and growing not stuck without sustainable growth methods. If you have to step out of the box and find another way to monetize just to bring more funds into your forum, then that works well too. Find things on Reddit and other social media sites that you can use to drive more traffic to your forum. Continue to build your community the best way you know how and forget the saying “forums are dying.” Just use that as motivation.

A new forum with very little traffic (like mine) should not try to monetize anything. To me it is unattractive and off putting and smells like desperation. Ads are like giving away valuable real estate for fractions of pennies. A site I am a member of (QRZ) is extremely popular, based on dated xf, no responsive screens, and has ads literally all over it. But on that site it works very well as the ads are targeted to the subject matter and in of itself, provides value to the members. But their member base is highly dedicated to the hobby. I have to realistically see that that is an outlier as most members of another regular forum would hate that and not return. Unfortunately I feel monetization of most forums are just to offset costs and realistically never do anything other than put off members and guests for pennies. edit to ad: I feel the same for most non-commercial websites, not just forums.

I'd recommend testing out Google Adsense for a bit and see what happens. I wouldn't use their auto ads though. You can place them in certain locations via the Xenforo's advertisements feature. I'd use their 728by60 ads in the "Container content: above" section.

For most people marketing, especially digital marketing, is all about dropping links here, there, everywhere. Well, you can certainly promote your website url through digital marketing, however, you need to understand sharing links is not marketing. Before you share your links, you need to build audience, you also need to make sure that your audience is genuine and loyal. Once you have built trust, you can start your marketing campaign. depending on what you are promoting, you can either build a marketing strategy with a long term approach or a marketing plan for short term goals

I own a Jcink forum and generally gain 30+ members a month. You would think that if a free forum service could gain you that many members a month, then the paid forum services would achieve greater results. I own a resource board, though, with most of the resources locked behind a registration wall, which is the primary reason I receive so many new members monthly. I digress that many members keep joining my board on a monthly basis, then surely forums have some purpose.

I haven’t, but my cousin owns a few of them. He actually records videos with his and posts them online. Are you making videos with yours or flying them around? I want to play with one though. They’re pretty cool

Don't matter if you're against it or not, AI is here and will be apart of everyone's life. Bow down to your future lords lol.

As written by Luc Weisman [MEDIA=medium]45c25d0d2b62[/MEDIA] This story comes three years of rebuilding a news website in the shadow of relentless Google algorithm updates, from organic search to Google Discover and Google News. We tested everything. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours trying to crack what now feels like an unsolvable problem. But what if the truth is harder to swallow? What if there were never a way to recover from Google’s Helpful Content (HCU) updates? What if the game was unwinnable from the start, and we’ve all just been flogging a dead horse? Why write this? Few publishers are willing to share the real stuff because the SEO industry is notoriously secretive (and dodgy at times). TBH I’ve given all the f*cks I have to give, so consider this free advice you didn't have to pay $200,000 for. In late 2023, one of Australia’s longest-running men’s lifestyle publications (my business) was essentially thrown out of Google. It was not penalised. It just gradually lost visibility. Traffic dropped from over eight million monthly uniques to three hundred thousand. There were no manual actions, no warnings, just the result of algorithm evolution. We weren’t publishing spam or gaming the system. We were doing what we had always done: creating original content with a 10-person editorial team focused on relevance and tone, watches, cars, food, travel, and more. We were setting the pace, no question. Our local competitors routinely lifted stories, angles, and ideas from us, reworked them, and claimed them as original. But we were always ahead. First never follows. Ever. Like many others, we turned to the SEO world to make sense of it all. We followed every update from John Mueller, waited for clarification from Danny Sullivan, listened to Barry Adams telling publishers to cut harder, and absorbed Glenn Gabe’s detailed breakdowns of visibility drops. We even approached Brodie Clark, who wanted $20,000 upfront to look at the website. Did we still consider it? Absofuckinglutely we did. You’ll do anything to save your firstborn — even if it has red hair. Everyone had theories and solutions. Most commentary only confirmed what we suspected. We were quietly pushed out, and technical SEO changes alone wouldn’t save us. We also approached the Google News Initiative, a program supposedly built to support journalism. We found surface-level marketing and no meaningful help, support, or answers. Just more empty promises while independent publishers like us sank quietly into irrelevance. ‘Have you read our documentation?’ was the usual response from Google’s News representatives here in Australia. To his credit, he did say that he was ‘flagging it with engineering’, which could mean anything, but we were appreciative as it gave us a glimmer of false hope. The catalyst? Twofold. First, with the November 2021 Core Update, things started slipping. Then came Google’s so-called Helpful Content Update, which promised to reward content made by people, for people. In reality, it turned into a vague, punitive shake-up that hit small to mid-sized publishers the hardest. So we tried to fix it. Not with tricks or shortcuts. But by going line by line through our twelve thousand article archive. We noindexed thin content. Deleted dead categories. Removed tags. Hired real experts. Rebuilt the editorial structure from scratch. And we spent thousands. Over two and a half years (longer actually) and countless hours, we did everything we were supposed to do. It didn’t work. In fact, we lost even more traffic and continue to lose it today. This is the reality no one talks about. Here is the full breakdown of what we did, and why following Google’s rules no longer guarantees survival. [HEADING=2]Triage Mode: Bringing in Lily Ray[/HEADING] Out of sheer desperation, we brought in SEO consultant Lily Ray, one of the few people consistently vocal about Google’s erratic treatment of publishers. We paid six hundred dollars (USD) an hour. She was sharp, pragmatic, and cautious about drawing conclusions without seeing all the data. Here is what she told us: [HEADING=2]Lily Ray’s Recommendations:[/HEADING] Do not delete categories. Demote them in navigation or move them to the footer or sitemap Make categories more granular, not broader Audit every URL using GA, GSC, backlinks, and traffic source data Strengthen internal linking using Link Whisperer or InLinks Add actual text to video-heavy pages Submit each Discover-style section to Google Publisher Center separately Remove or isolate NSFW content, which could be dragging down the entire domain Consider testing a new subdomain just for Discover If Discover shows signs of life on any topic, double down and publish two or three related posts immediately You cover too many topics. Remove some That last point contradicted her first recommendation. If GQ or Esquire can cover everything, why can’t we? She confirmed what we feared. We were not just caught in an update. We were probably soft-banned from Discover. No warning. No confirmation. But zero impressions for twelve months says enough. This also extended to Google News and organic search. So now I want to share what we have done in case it helps someone else. [HEADING=2]1. Purged what we assumed was thin or low quality, but probably wasn’t[/HEADING] We started with word count. Articles under two hundred words are not always low quality, but they often lack depth. Thousands were noindexed, converted to draft, or deleted. It was not about hitting a specific number. We just wanted to avoid anything Google might label unhelpful. Remember that over 15 years, we have interviewed some awe-inspiring people—doctors, CEOs, athletes, you name it. It’s not like our publication was a content farm on the outskirts of Mumbai. We even had a print magazine, 100,000 email subscribers, and a few hundred thousand social followers. [HEADING=2]2. Stripped embed heavy content[/HEADING] Next we tackled stories built around embedded media. TikToks, YouTube videos, tweets. About thirteen hundred of them. These stories often had one or two lines of text and then someone else’s content. We removed the embeds, rewrote the copy, and rebuilt them as original articles. [HEADING=2]3. Cut quote padded news or interviews[/HEADING] We looked at stories padded with quotes. Common practice in newsrooms, but risky when there is little original value. Articles based on Reddit threads, press releases, or celebrity statements were either rewritten or deleted. It didn’t matter that other publishers do it. We are not other publishers. [HEADING=2]4. Fixed the basic editorial structure[/HEADING] Every surviving article was reviewed: Internal links were added to strong-performing articles External links were added to brands, research, or original sources More than one image was included Inline related reads were added to help signal topical relevance It was manual. It was obsessive. It was slow. And ultimately? No visible impact. [HEADING=2]5. Deleted every tag page[/HEADING] We deleted all tag pages across the site. Not noindexed. Deleted. They weren’t ranking. They weren’t being crawled. And they weren’t being used. The impact on traffic? Zero. This confirmed our long standing belief that tag pages were just leftover clutter from WordPress. [HEADING=2]6. Tested E-E-A-T theories[/HEADING] We brought in real subject matter experts. Fashion stylists. Car journalists like Mike Sinclair. Watch experts like Jamie Weissand Felix Scholz. Grooming specialists, hairdressers, GPs and plastic surgeons. We created bios. Cross-linked their profiles. Gave them proper credit. Interviewed them regularly and ensured their stories were high quality. Based on the guidelines, this should have helped. But it didn’t. The content performed the same. [HEADING=2]7. Pruned dormant categories[/HEADING] Then we went further, too far, some would say, but desperate times call for desperate measures. And let’s be honest, it can’t get any worse at this point. Despite Lily’s original advice and our own instincts, we completely deleted all content verticals, such as style, sport, grooming, food, and entertainment. Later, she recommended that we have too many topics. Our thinking was based on the Google Search documentation leak that mentioned SiteFocus. We assumed being too broad was hurting us, so we narrowed our scope. The result? We lost even more traffic due to the disappearance of long-tail content. No recovery followed. Lily had advised that we were too broad. But all lifestyle websites are broad. That is the nature of the format. Personally, I was certain this would do the trick. Just slowly remove entire categories in hope the ghost in the machine was in one of those. It appears not. [HEADING=2]8. Google Discover and News continued to reward garbage and not ‘quality’.[/HEADING] The most frustrating part? While we were cutting carefully written journalism, Google Discover was filled with spam. AI generated content. Clickbait. Content farms with fake author profiles. Image heavy junk with no editorial value. It completely undermined the promise of helpful content. It proved we were not even playing the right game. [HEADING=2]9. Y M Y L & [/HEADING] We had a large health section focused on fitness and mental health for men. We were proud of it. Trainers and doctors contributed. But we were unsure if this was holding us back. So we deindexed and removed the entire health section. Two thousand articles. A real loss. Especially since men need more guidance in this area, not less. NSFW is a pretty obvious one. However, we were clutching at straws and desperate, so we systematically removed every instance of swearing (like sh*t or cr*ap). Even words that could be slightly flagged as ‘inappropriate’ got rewritten. Thousands of articles were edited. Manually. We then wondered if fitness articles with shirtless guys working out could be an issue, so the entire fitness category was edited. You can see just how far we were willing to take this. I was willing to kill years of work just to find the smoking gun. [HEADING=2]10. Too many ads![/HEADING] Let’s be clear, this is complete nonsense. Those vague video chats John Mueller does about whether ads impact rankings are meaningless. Glenn Gabe also mentioned this too. If your site is loaded with pop-ups, autoplay videos, and a terrible user experience, you can still rank just fine. It doesn’t matter whether you have five or fifty per page. Just look at the Daily Mail or Daily Express. Those chaotic, ad-choked messes rank everywhere and print money doing it. We became so cautious that we all but removed ads from the site. Like wtf. We were willing to throw away revenue to try and find a solution to the problem. So much so that today we earn about 3-%5% of what we once did on programmatic ads. Them’s the brakes when you build a house on quicksand. [HEADING=2]11. Changed subdirectory structure in permalinks[/HEADING] We were told by Lily that Google couldn’t properly identify our site’s content themes because we didn’t include categories in our URL structure. So we rebuilt the entire permalink setup to include subdirectories for every article — watches, cars, travel, business, and so on — to give Google a clearer content hierarchy. It was a big change that created thousands of redirects across the site. The result? Absolutely zero impact. This was 18 months ago too. No dice. [HEADING=2]12. Competitive analysis[/HEADING] It won't surprise you, but my analysis of other websites was exhaustive. What was most interesting was the inconsistency between seemingly similar sites to ours and the difference in visibility across all Google channels. This led me down the backlink path; however, nothing stood out. We had a 15-year backlink profile with Bloomberg, CNN, The Guardian, Business Insider, and Wikipedia linking to many of our stories. Sure, there was a fair share of sh*t links in there, but everyone has those. We had even tried the disavow path, but that proved to be useless. My only conclusion here is maybe too much affiliate-focused content, which is why we removed every ‘Best…’ story we had (there was a lot btw — most products we purchased and reviewedin the studio. Again, trial and error. Mostly errors, and things that just didn’t make sense. [HEADING=2]13. Lastly, technical SEO.[/HEADING] We genuinely believed technical SEO would be a game-changer. Every year, we invested around $60,000 to $70,000 into development, testing, and benchmarking against sites that were thriving. We scrutinised everything from permalink structures, server configurations, Core Web Vitals, whether using www made a difference, and dozens of other technical factors. We double-checked, triple-checked, ran audits, optimised crawlability, and made the site as fast and clean as possible. It should have been a textbook example of technical best practice. But once again, it made no difference. [HEADING=2]What we concluded…[/HEADING] After two and a half years, thousands of hours, and more than two hundred thousand dollars, we reached a difficult but honest conclusion. Google does not operate with a single set of rules. And that is fine. There is no point crying foul. Hate the player… We tried to fix things the right way. We did not take shortcuts. We followed the rules. Not just the public ones, but the ones implied through leaks and updates. We treated the site like a real publication and tried to regain Google’s trust. But when we compare ourselves to others in the same space, including newer sites with weaker content published at scale, it is clear that the playing field is not even. Some of them dominate Discover and News. Some run headlines that no proper editor would approve. And yet, they continue to grow. We continue to shrink. We were not an authority even for categories like watches, which we had covered extensively since day one. The first DMARGE post was a watch story ffs. The part that hurts the most is this. It has taken the joy out of finding stories. The thrill of beating the news cycle. Of spotting something big media missed. That lightning bolt moment that drives real publishers. We no longer chase it. Because what is the point if no one sees it? It’s better to publish on Instagram or in our newsletter now, rather than as an article. As of today, we have gone from a twelve-thousand-article site with fifteen years of authority to three thousand articles focused only on watches, cars, and business travel. I do not understand how all this effort and precision can lead to zero gain. It tells me the issue is not with us. It is with them. And it took three years and a lot of money to figure that out. Along the way, we also lost many full-time journalists. My gut says one of Google’s many signals is wrong. Not for everyone. I think that because other competitors are in the same boat. The difference is that we did everything to try and fix it. Also, I think generally Google’s focus is now e-commerce and AI, as that makes money. Just look at GSC and GA4, they’ve evolved for shopping, not news. If there is any value left in this process, it is in being honest. Maybe this post will save someone else thousands of hours trying to decode a rulebook that keeps changing. I have spent fifteen years building a digital publishing company that people actually enjoy reading. I have never seen an industry move the goalposts so often and punish the people who try to play fair. Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I will keep doing this. TBH journalism is generally fucked, and will soon be thing of the past. But if you are still reading, at least now you know. You are not alone. And if you ever find the golden ticket, please share it. Your peers deserve success too.

I think we should stop putting a huge emphasis on what the new generation is doing or what they’re not doing and focus on the communities we have. Social media all took 10+ years to build, communities are the same way if we want them to succeed and do well. Worrying about statistics only drains us and pulls in deeper. As long as we focus on creating and building our core communities, things will get better. Word of mouth is the strongest growth factor. We can pull users in from social media with quality content and posting around reddit. But, it’s not possible if we’re not watching things that Reddit is doing wrong or what other sites(social media) is doing wrong as well. that’s the key thing. Forums don’t need to adapt to social media standards tbh, they’re not like social media. Reddit strives on their badge like system, reputation system and karma, which are something that forums could also implement further. Those features could boast forum’s appeal all around.

I've installed the clans plugin on Thee Zone! I still need to get a feel for it but I do plan on getting the forums plugin for clans so I see if I can move existing forums to a clan. Clans are Woltlab Suite's version of groups or clubs. I think it'll help declutter my forum. :)

Verticle Sc The main thing is also Vertical scope communities aren’t ran like they used to be either, which is very unfortunate. Most of them we’re thriving online communities prior to being brought out by their founders. If they actually focused on improving the forums, then they wouldn’t be declining. They basically just sit there and collect dust.🤦🏿‍♂️ For example, they own TheadminZone, which is a shell of its former self and many car forums. There’s various discussion topics across the web where users discuss them buying forums and killing them. https://www.reddit.com/r/4x4/s/8t29FJxVA1 https://forums.irixnet.org/thread-3430.html https://www.triumphrat.net/threads/buy-out-vertical-scope-%E2%80%9Cno-pictures-no-peace-%E2%80%9D.1007693/ you can also see how many forums they own here: https://trends.builtwith.com/websitelist/VerticalScope

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No, I don't. I tried promoting my blog through youtube but I never got any traction. Therefore, these days I don't even use youtube for my blogs. However, I am thinking to give it a try for my forum. Since a couple of months I am running a mental health community and I plan on creating a youtube channel for my community. I would like to create short videos on mental health niche and share my forum links with the videos.

I mainly just announce it on the forum updates board and then go along with my business, haha.

I think that people are redoubling their efforts against platform algorithm choke-holds. I know, at least for myself, all I see everywhere on the major social media sites is nothing but political discussion, bashing, and flat out propaganda. I'm tired of it. In fact, within the last month, I've retreated back to full time foruming (new word?, probably not.) for a breath of fresh air. It's actually nice being among the quiet. I almost feel as if I'm visiting a library! Surrounded by tons of books, subtle conversation, and loads of opportunity!

I was a Ham a few decades ago. I unfortunately let my license expire and never got around to retaking the exam to renew it. I've since moved on to other passions.

The number one thing you can do for security on WordPress, other than ensuring all admin logins have 2FA enabled, is to change the default login page from /wp-admin.php to another filename and thus make it that bit harder for someone to "find" the page easily and just start trying logins. Of course, you should never have a "default" username or password either, but that should be common sense for any semi-experienced website owner.

Forums are privately owned websites (most of them at least I believe). This means whoever runs the forum can decide to revoke your right to access their website for whatever reason they want. This may sound harsh, but that's the truth. With great power comes great responsibility. A good leader will not ban you from their website for politely expressing a counter-opinion BUT they could. Therefore, there is no point in having a publicly available moderation log, because it does not matter whether users think you are right or wrong, you can do what you want. The logs are there so whoever is in charge can see who did what and then decide whether it was a good decision or not. People either like you, your forum and the way you run it or they do not. Having publicly available moderation logs will not affect that, or at least in my opinion never in a good way. Whether you have them available for users to see or not will not give you any "trust points".

In all seriousness, I would probably try to find out what others are saying about me if anything.