Online Communities | Articles

Online chat is not dangerous

I was going through some of my old files the other day and came across an old article I had written for Just Chat in response to MSN’s decision to close its chat rooms back in 2003. MSN claimed this move was in response to concerns about child safety in online chat, although many suspected [...]

Use forum ranks to make members feel valued

Your members are the most valuable asset your site has - if you do not make them feel welcome and valued, they will soon go elsewhere. There are many ways of preventing this, and all of them come down to making your members feel valued.
In this article I want to talk about an easy way [...]

Google’s PageRank updates

As you may be aware, Google is currently updating the PageRank it awards to websites it includes in its search database. Google uses PageRank to determine your site’s popularity and credibility. The higher your PageRank, the more authoritative Google considers your site to be.
I use the PageRank checker over at PRchecker to keep an eye [...]

Whose blog should I Live Bookmark?

I am a great fan of Firefox’s Live Bookmarks - I add all the blogs I read daily to the Live Bookmarks panel. This allows me to keep an eye on when the blogs are updated with new articles. When I see they are, I click the article name and surf over to read the [...]

Don’t obsess about search engines

I see many webmasters fretting about how their site will be viewed by search engines. Indeed, I think that many site owners spend more time worrying about the opinions that search engines hold about their site over what real visitors will think!
I believe that if you focus on creating original and exceptional content, search engine [...]

Make your site feedback friendly

In many of my previous articles I have stressed the importance of asking your members what they want. From redesigning your website to engaging with your members, it is important that you make it easy for your site’s users to provide you with their opinions and feedback.
If your site members think it is too difficult [...]

Forum competitions are a bad idea

Many people think that running forum competitions are a good way of building an online community. I disagree. I have seen many competitions that offer prizes to the member that makes the most posts each month - the forum is then deluged with useless posts such as ‘I agree’ or a couple of smilies, and [...]

No posts today

There will be no new article posted today - yesterday I ran the Flora London Marathon for charity, and needless to say that today I am extremely tired and a little stiff!
Normal service will resume tomorrow; thanks for your understanding!

Linking etiquette

When creating a link, there are two ways of doing it - via a link that opens in the same window, or one that opens in a new window. Deciding which to use can be a little tricky - here are my preferences.
Links opening in the same window
All internal site links in my opinion, should [...]

Dealing with abusive members

As mentioned in a previous article on the importance of rules, they are vital to have in order to help you deal with any abusive members on your community website. By having site rules, you are able to refer members to them if they are creating tension and problems within your community.
How to deal with [...]

The importance of speedy moderation

For a whole variety of reasons, you may decide to moderate all user contributions to you community website before they are published. Perhaps you are having trouble with abusive members or spammers. Either way if you decide to moderate contributions before they appear on your site, you must ensure that you moderate as frequently and [...]

My top five usability requirements

It is important that you place a strong consideration on your site’s usability. You should be permanently tweaking and adjusting your website to improve its usability. Here are what I consider to be the top five usability requirements for a website:

The logo should always link to the homepage – how many times have you clicked [...]

Don’t always believe your membership count

As your forum grows it is only natural that you become proud of those ever increasing membership figures. When you started off you were getting maybe five new members in a week, whereas now you are seeing fifty new members each day. Look a little closer though, and you may find these figures to be [...]

Is Google becoming too dominant?

Google recently announced its acquisition of DoubleClick in a $3 billion deal. Whilst this may open new opportunities for both publishers and advertisers, it has me a little worried.
Google established itself with the mantra ‘Do no evil’ – it is becoming increasingly important that Google stays true to this as it becomes ever more dominant [...]

The importance of first impressions

Just as in real life, first impressions online are hugely important. A study has shown that web users decide whether they are interested in a website within just a 20th of a second. This means your site must be focussed and clear enough so that the surfer who spends that 20th of a second on [...]

Watching referral stats can aid growth

You should always be checking your website’s traffic logs. Just Chat is seven years old and I still check my traffic stats at least every week through Google Analytics. In this article I want to talk about the importance of your referral stats in particular, and how using them correctly can actually further increase traffic [...]

Compare your site traffic

If you want to compare the levels of traffic your site is getting against other sites such as competitors, you may use Alexa. Alexa measures traffic information by their overall popularity against all other websites. As you may expect, the big sites such as Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft appear right at the top. Just Chat [...]

Using Google Analytics site overlay

If you have not already installed Google Analytics on your website, I would highly recommend it. Sure, you are giving Google details about your traffic but if you are running AdSense on your website they already know a lot about your site as it is! In my opinion, the knowledge and information your are given [...]

Always enable comments on your blog

I have been reading a few different blogs and forums lately and was surprised that many of them recommend new blogs disable the ‘add comments’ feature. Their argument is that enabling comments only for them not to be used damages your blog as it makes it obvious that you have a low number of visitors.
Disabling [...]

Less AdSense is more AdSense

If you use Google AdSense to monetise your site, you may know that you are able to place up to three AdSense units on each page of your website. Using more than one ad block may not be effective though, and I will tell you why.
The AdSense pricing structure
The majority of ads on your site [...]

Always set yourself targets

Building and maintaining websites is a lot of hard work. No doubt you have a mental ‘to-do’ list which you refer to when deciding what area of your site to work on next. Whilst this may work for some people, you will probably find that writing down what needs to done as well as when [...]

Are you a spam fighter?

If you run a community website, you will get spammers - it is inevitable. Indeed, I am often amazed how some spammers manage to find new websites before the search engines! Spammers can ruin a community website - it is essential that you keep on top of them and prevent them from having a negative [...]

Optimising Google Adsense

Many of us monetise our websites through Google Adsense - indeed, AdSense is one of the revenue streams implemented on Just Chat. I only place the ads on the chat forum pages; other areas of the site are monetised through other advertising and affiliate programs. I thought I had optimised and implemented AdSense quite well [...]

Get free traffic for your blog

Getting Free Traffic & Exposure For Your Blog
It is no good having a blog if nobody is reading it! It would be like talking to yourself, but without the odd looks from passers-by.
Here are some steps I took in order to attract traffic to this blog without spending a penny on advertising:
Add Content
There is [...]

Advertising choices affect your site’s credibility

A lot of people setup a website in order to make money. A good way of monetising your website is through advertising - but be careful when implementing advertisements as they can affect the credibility of your site.
Always remember that your website is a brand. You work hard at building this brand, so do not [...]

Improving your website

Back in early March, I wrote about the importance of thinking through your reasons and objectives before redesigning your website. Today I want to be a little more specific, and write about the constant process you should be going through in order to tweak and improve your site.
Some people think that once you have designed [...]

Make your blog link love compatible

Community Spark is now ‘Link Love Compatible’. I have installed a plugin to prevent your URL from being marked as ‘no follow’ when you comment. Therefore, every comment you now make which includes your URL will be counted by the search engines as a real link.
Why is this included by default in WordPress?
The default inclusion [...]

The dangers of using other blogs for inspiration

Blogs are just as much online communities as forums are. Whilst with a blog the author makes much of the content, really good blogs involve interaction through the comments feature. In this post I want to write about the dangers of using other blogs for inspiration for your own articles.
If you are committed to your [...]

Using suspense to promote interaction

The key to a successful online community is getting people to interact. Some forums have a huge number of members but a much lower number of posts than you would expect. This is particularly the case in ‘general forums’ where there is no particular subject for discussion.
If a community continues in this way for too [...]

How to optimise page titles in phpBB

As you may be aware, the standard title structure in phpBB forums is as follows:
Site Name :: View topic - Topic Title
So for example:
Just Chat :: View topic - Borat movie review
This isn’t particularly good for search engine rankings - they place considerable importance on the titles of your pages. Having your site name as [...]