Moving Forum to my website...

[welshy]

I think this site is great. Built up a nice lot of registered users.

I am thinking of getting a domain name and web hosting (for my forum to show up in a google search too).

Would i be able to export mt forum and all its features, members etc to my website? and possibly change the domain to one that will show up in a Google search please?

I know it's cheeky, but hey - cheeky is my middle name. :twisted:

Maany Thanks.

[JimmyNeal]

Originally Posted by welshy

I think this site is great. Built up a nice lot of registered users.

I am thinking of getting a domain name and web hosting (for my forum to show up in a google search too).

Would i be able to export mt forum and all its features, members etc to my website? and possibly change the domain to one that will show up in a Google search please?

I know it's cheeky, but hey - cheeky is my middle name. :twisted:

Maany Thanks.

Google will catalog your forum as it is, no need to do anything else. You can buy a domain name for $9.99 a year and forward it to your forum as it is.

As far as moving your forum, good luck with that, I've been trying to figure out how to do that for several months. Nobody around here is going to tell you how.

[welshy]

Originally Posted by JimmyNeal

Google will catalog your forum as it is, no need to do anything else. You can buy a domain name for $9.99 a year and forward it to your forum as it is.

As far as moving your forum, good luck with that, I've been trying to figure out how to do that for several months. Nobody around here is going to tell you how.

Thanks for your reply. My forum doesn't show up in a Google search. How do you go about adding a domain name to my forum please?

Many Thanks,

Jamie.

[JimmyNeal]

Originally Posted by welshy

Thanks for your reply. My forum doesn't show up in a Google search. How do you go about adding a domain name to my forum please?

Many Thanks,

Jamie.

Open an account at someplace like godaddy.com and purchase a domain name for 9.99 or less per year. You then use their tools to "forward" that domain to your forum. A good example is one of mine, grandparentsforchange.com that I purchased from godaddy. It is forwarded to my forum at Bizhat. If I move my forum to another company, I just change the forwarding to the new company. You can forward your domain to any url.

As for showing up on a google search, that depends on several factors, what key words you are using and how long you have had your forum. searching for the url might not bring back a hit. Try searching for some key words that are in one of the posts.

If you want the url listed with google put it in several posts on your forum and post it on other forums, like this one, in your signature and profile and in posts. Thing is people who don't know about your forum do not know the url to search for it by name. You need to put key words in your posts that you think people will be searching for.

I wanted google to catalog my pages and bring back hits for individual names, so, I posted those names as often as I could in every post I could. Now those names show up in google searches on the first page with links to my forum.

Google ranks your site using three criteria, number of hits, number of other sites that link to your site, and recently by how much you pay google for advertising. You can increase the number of sites that link to yours by joining forums like this and post your url in you signature, your profile and in posts. Blogs and guestbooks are just as good. You can have your friends and forum members help you with this and do even better.

I suggest that you do some research on how the internet and various aspects of it work, that will help you to have a better and more productive site. There is more to it than just putting up a site and welcoming people to it, there are billions of web pages on the internet.

[welshy]

Sorry for the delay.

Jimmy - Thank you very much for the info.

I have got adomain name (waiting for it to be transfered over) to my Host.

I would have liked to take my PHPBB with me - but as i haven't got a foggiest idea of how to do it.

I was thinking of "Renting" one from vbull**in (rival).

With regards to the keywords, my host has confirmed that this can only be done by form of "META TABS".

I also read somewhere that Google Robots & Spiders, do not list this as well as they used too.

Is that right, Please?

Many Thanks for all your Help.

[JimmyNeal]

Originally Posted by welshy

I would have liked to take my PHPBB with me - but as i haven't got a foggiest idea of how to do it.

Nobody else around here seems to know how to do it either and BizHat isn't talking.

I was thinking of "Renting" one from vbull**in (rival).

I purchased a hosting account from lunarpages. Everything is included with the account for 6.95 mo, blogs, php boards that are the best I've seen, ecommerce tools, just about anything you would need for a web site. My boards have been up for about 2 1/2 months and not one spam entry or profile. Only drawback is, the configurations can take a while, there are sooooo many of them. The themes are really great and can be edited with a only little knowledge.

With regards to the keywords, my host has confirmed that this can only be done by form of "META TABS".

Not really true. Since google, and others, catalog the web pages and the content, you can use the body text as pseudo meta tags. If you do a search on google you will notice that some of your keywords are highlited in the page text. This is expecially true on dlogs and boards where you have no control of meta tags.

I also read somewhere that Google Robots & Spiders, do not list this as well as they used too.

Don't really know. My google listings with my bizhat board is the only thing I've been happy with here.

[welshy]

Hi Jimmy, To be honest - I would have to go for a simple to use (already set up) forum.

Not too good on the workings on that side of the PC.