Cpvr

What's the most challenging part of running a forum, in your experience? Personally, I think the hardest part is getting the forum off the ground during those first few months. Once you’ve built a solid user base, things tend to run more smoothly. What about you? Do you agree, or do you find something else more difficult?

Cloudflare announced new tools Monday that it claims will help end the era of endless AI scraping by giving all sites on its network the power to block bots in one click. That will help stop the firehose of unrestricted AI scraping, but, perhaps even more intriguing to content creators everywhere, Cloudflare says it will also make it easier to identify which content that bots scan most, so that sites can eventually wall off access and charge bots to scrape their most valuable content. To pave the way for that future, Cloudflare is also creating a marketplace for all sites to negotiate content deals based on more granular AI audits of their sites. These tools, Cloudflare's blog said, give content creators "for the first time" ways "to quickly and easily understand how AI model providers are using their content, and then take control of whether and how the models are able to access it." That's necessary for content creators because the rise of generative AI has made it harder to value their content, Cloudflare suggested in a longer blog explaining the tools. Previously, sites could distinguish between approving access to helpful bots that drive traffic, like search engine crawlers, and denying access to bad bots that try to take down sites or scrape sensitive or competitive data. But now, "Large Language Models (LLMs) and other generative tools created a murkier third category" of bots, Cloudflare said, that don't perfectly fit in either category. They don't "necessarily drive traffic" like a good bot, but they also don't try to steal sensitive data like a bad bot, so many site operators don't have a clear way to think about the "value exchange" of allowing AI scraping, Cloudflare said. That's a problem because enabling all scraping could hurt content creators in the long run, Cloudflare predicted. "Many sites allowed these AI crawlers to scan their content because these crawlers, for the most part, looked like 'good' bots—only for the result to mean less traffic to their site as their content is repackaged in AI-written answers," Cloudflare said. Today, Cloudflare site operators can stop manually blocking each AI bot one by one and instead choose to "block all AI bots in one click," Cloudflare said. They can do this by visiting the Bots section under the Security tab of the Cloudflare dashboard, then clicking a blue link in the top-right corner "to configure how Cloudflare’s proxy handles bot traffic," Cloudflare said. On that screen, operators can easily "toggle the button in the 'Block AI Scrapers and Crawlers' card to the 'On' position," blocking everything and giving content creators time to strategize what access they want to re-enable, if any. Beyond just blocking bots, operators can also conduct AI audits, quickly analyzing which sections of their sites are scanned most by which bots. From there, operators can decide which scraping is allowed and use sophisticated controls to decide which bots can scrape which parts of their sites. "For some teams, the decision will be to allow the bots associated with AI search engines to scan their Internet properties because those tools can still drive traffic to the site," Cloudflare's blog explained. "Other organizations might sign deals with a specific model provider, and they want to allow any type of bot from that provider to access their content." For publishers already playing whack-a-mole with bots, a key perk would be if Cloudflare's tools allowed them to write rules to restrict certain bots that scrape sites for both "good" and "bad" purposes to keep the good and throw away the bad. Perhaps the most frustrating bot for publishers today is the Googlebot, which scrapes sites to populate search results as well as to train AI to generate Google search AI overviews that could negatively impact traffic to source sites by summarizing content. Publishers currently have no way of opting out of training models fueling Google's AI overviews without losing visibility in search results, and Cloudflare's tools won't be able to get publishers out of that uncomfortable position, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince confirmed to Ars. For any site operators tempted to toggle off all AI scraping, blocking the Googlebot from scraping and inadvertently causing dips in traffic may be a compelling reason not to use Cloudflare's one-click solution. However, Prince expects "that Google's practices over the long term won't be sustainable" and "that CloudFlare will be a part of getting Google and other folks that are like Google" to give creators "much more granular control over" how bots like the Googlebot scrape the web to train AI. Prince told Ars that while Google solves its "philosophical" internal question of whether the Googlebot's scraping is for search or for AI, a technical solution to block one bot from certain kinds of scraping will likely soon emerge. And in the meantime, "there can also be a legal solution" that "can rely on contract law" based on improving sites' terms of service. Source: https://apple.news/Ae20183TKQvSSYgWlbotguQ

I used to play basketball with my buddies, but ever since I broke my ankles a couple of years ago, I don’t play sports anymore. I broke them both on separate occasions, a year apart. Now I like hanging out indoors and watching sports games with my buddies instead.

Hey [mention=379]Shane[/mention] welcome to Agora!

I see this happen frequently. People come to admin forums asking why their new forum is struggling or failing to grow. In response, they often get the typical answers: forums are dying out, or maybe it's just bad luck. You know how it goes. But when I take a closer look at their forum, one issue stands out. They hardly post on their own site. At most, they might have made one or two posts in the last 24 hours, usually just replying to existing topics. Sometimes, they haven't posted anything for days, weeks, or even months, expecting their users to miraculously keep the forum alive with hundreds of new posts without any effort on their part. How can they expect their forum to thrive with such little involvement? Running a forum isn’t easy. You can’t just create some content on day one and sit back for months while expecting your community to automatically grow and generate content daily. It might seem like things are going well initially, especially if you have a popular blog, YouTube channel, or offline presence. But that momentum won’t last. No one is so popular that their forum will sustain itself while they do nothing. I've seen many successful content creators launch forums, only to watch them fail within weeks. So here’s some basic but crucial advice for running a forum: Post regularly. Share news and articles that interest you. Write your own content at least weekly, and start conversations in your forum to encourage engagement. If you want your forum to succeed, you can't just sit back and do nothing. The world doesn’t owe you success—it's up to you to keep your site active with fresh, daily content.

Thank you for sharing your forum with us! I like the design.😃

I’ve travelled to California, Illinois, Florida and Canada before. I’d like to travel to Africa one day though as that’s where my dad was born and raised at.

What are some of your favorite methods for growing your online community? Do you use post exchanges when launching a new community? What about using a posting package from a promotion forum? Do you promote your forum on social media to expand your reach and attract new members, or do you promote it through your signature on other forums?

Hey [mention=367]Mofl14[/mention] welcome to Agora! It’s nice to see you here.

Do you remember the first time you joined an online community? What was the first forum that you started posting on? I started my forum career by posting on Sitepoint and Theadminzone, I also posted on Digitalpoint for a while. Forums have been apart of my life for a long time now and I love being apart of new and old forums because I like to network and make new friends. So, what was the first forum that you joined?

Welcome to the community! [mention=6]Cory[/mention] It’s time to have fun!😁

Hey [mention=347]reynejay[/mention] welcome to Agora! We’re glad to have you on board.

Welcome to Agora! [mention=349]danbobosky[/mention]

What was the SEO site called? Was it a directory? In 2009, it was a great era, especially if you submitted a post on Digg or StumbleUpon and it went viral. This method could easily attract a bunch of backlinks to your website and boost your traffic.

Hey [mention=341]bennee[/mention], welcome to Agora! If you’re looking to find new clients, be sure to advertise your services in our Freelancer services forum.

Hey [mention=338]kierronkiingk[/mention], welcome to Agora! How long have you been freelancing? What type of work do you enjoy doing?

Hey [mention=328]shrinislam[/mention] welcome to Agora!

Backlinks are an important part of SEO and can either make or break your website when it comes to your site’s rankings on search engines. So, whether you’ve been building backlinks for a while or are just starting out, how many backlinks does your site have? According to my Google Search Console stats, my site currently has 14k backlinks. Most of these backlinks point to various pages on my forum, allowing each page to rank accordingly. Of course, my homepage has the most links. What about you? How many backlinks does your site have? Are you working toward a specific goal when it comes to building links?

Javascript DS cheetsheat.

Hey [mention=322]Masterib[/mention] welcome to Agora! It’s great to see you here. How did you find us?

I’m feeling pretty good today. I hope everyone is doing well!

I agree. Your attitude and personality helps defines you not your looks.

Hey [mention=320]RainbowSunshine[/mention] welcome to Agora!

Welcome to the community! [mention=321]LoukiaCharilaou[/mention]

Google has announced plans to introduce changes to its Search feature, aiming to provide clearer identification of images that have been created or modified using AI tools. Over the coming months, Google will start flagging AI-generated and AI-edited images in the “About this image” section on platforms like Google Search, Google Lens, and the Android-exclusive Circle to Search feature. These disclosures could extend to other Google platforms, such as YouTube, though more details on this will be revealed later this year. The key point is that only images containing “C2PA metadata” will be marked as AI-altered in Search. C2PA, or the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, is working on standards to track an image's origin, including the devices and software used to capture or create it. This initiative is supported by major companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Adobe. However, as highlighted by The Verge, C2PA’s standards face adoption and compatibility issues, with only a few generative AI tools and select cameras from Leica and Sony currently supporting them. Furthermore, C2PA metadata can be removed, corrupted, or rendered unreadable, making it a less than perfect solution. Some widely-used AI tools, such as Flux (utilized by xAI's Grok chatbot for image generation), do not incorporate C2PA metadata, partly because their developers have not endorsed the standard. Despite these challenges, these measures are a step in the right direction amid the growing prevalence of deepfakes. One report estimates a 245% increase in scams using AI-generated content between 2023 and 2024. According to Deloitte, losses related to deepfakes are expected to skyrocket from $12.3 billion in 2023 to $40 billion by 2027. Public surveys also indicate that most people are worried about being misled by deepfakes and the potential of AI to spread propaganda. Source: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/17/google-will-begin-flagging-ai-generated-images-in-search-later-this-year/