Nov 25
Nov 03
EDIT: I have written a short post on how to make an xml sitemap for phpfox here.
I have gotten a lot of experience lately using PhpFox, so I will continue my earlier post on PhpFox SEO, and do a full review.
- As I said already, the default installation sucks for SEO, but the pages get easily indexed. You have to keep in mind that the engine is huge, the empty installation is 2500 files alone.
- RSS feeds are not validated, and cannot be feedburned. They do work on readers though.
- Sitemaps are text based, and cannot be submitted to Google Webmaster Tools.
- Meta descriptions are all duplicate…
- Internal url structure gives you this ugly thing:Â http://www.simeioseis.gr/blog/view/id_2/title_/
But, if we ignore the SEO issues (honestly I had no trouble ranking the site), we are left with a very powerful tool.
The built in features are amazing.
- Video module allows you to embed, share, rate, feature videos, and lets members comment on the video page.
- Gallery can automatically watermark, slideshow, rate, comment and show thumbnails for browsing.
- Events mod allows you to set up happenings related to your niche, festivals etc.
- Forum despite being too empty featured, it works fine. I will elaborate on that on the next PhpFox post.
- Blogs are crap.
- Polls are fun.
- Classifieds is useful for any community.
- Pm system simply works.
- Groups can keep subniches busy for a long time.
- Integrated social buttons are a great feature. If only they were more easily manageable…
- And there are a million other mods, most paid, to expand its features.
As I was saying, for a newbie webmaster it is a great solution. As soon as you install it, you have a powerful mini myspace in your hands, with many more features than you really need.
I honestly prefer it when compared to Joomla community builder, or any other social script for that matter… You can get most features to work just the way you want them using the mods, and the script itself has more features than you can think of, to keep your members busy and happy.
On a different note, I have noticed a lack of information on social webmasters online. I googled for hours trying to find the info I needed, and I found only bits of segmented information on fora.
I will try to gather up as much as I can in these posts, with a focus on Phpfox, because the script simply works.
Monetizing your community is not always easy. PhpFox was initially built to host dating communities with paypal subscription, the features are wired in and enabled by default. One way is subscription based, but I was always a freebie fan. Monetize with ads.
PhpFox has 5 ad spots by default, a top right small banner, a wide skyscraper, a large leaderboard footer, a large box for the homepage and profile pages, and a rather useless logout large box.
I found out that PhpFox generates A LOT of pageviews. No, I mean A LOT. A TON. On my community, the total visitor count up to now is 5k, and the pageviews are 340k. That is a lot.
Make sure to get either the footer banner or the header, a cpm ad to utilize the pageviews. I use Adbrite, but there are other networks as well. I mention those banner spots, because they can be seen in every page.
As for the rather useless logout banner, a pathetic attempt at “exit traffic monetization”, I suggest that you do not put an ad, and rather put in a banner for a site you own that is of general interest. Seems to work better. It will get few views anyway.
You can also throw up a quick McJiffy eBay store at another domain, and link to it from your forum, products within the niche of course. Put it up on a sticky, link it, and forget about it. Might work, might not, who cares.
A fantastic feature of PhpFox is that every module allows the users to add content. Â That is great, because those few who contribute to the community, will contribute a lot, and the engine lets them do that in many ways. My members already created groups, quizzes, uploaded videos and started threads for introduction and site features discussion.
A serious lack is the forum module. It works fine, but is too basic. Vbulletin has upped the standards so much, that any other forum engine seems like it came from 1996. The best way to fix this is to install Lightweight, a forum mod that does the job. It has many useless features, ironically making it less of a lightweight, but it works, and keeps the ball rolling with ease.
I also worked on a sister site, a music concert related site with a friend. There, we wanted to utilize the events mod, and thankfully found the Aitoc advanced events mod, which pimps out the events module. Actually, it simply replaces it, you install the new and disable the old. The module adds images to your events, adds recurring events functionality, removes the requirement for “address” so you can schedule online events.
A google maps box shows below the event page, showing the address, which is amazingly recognizable automatically! It allows the members to opt in for event change notifications, and also invite not only their friends but any other member to the event.
The point here is that you can use Phpfox for almost any social site you can possibly think of. The blogging platform kinda sucks though… Increased features on blogging would really make this engine a must.
Well, this is my PhpFox review, after having created a community with it. I will post soon some technical issues with Phpfox, as well as some modification information that I think some people will find useful.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Oct 15
Communities are the ultimate blackhat
Let me say that again:
Communities are the ultimate blackhat
What does blackhat mean?
Mainly automation, and content generation, all while exploiting a bug or two.
What do communities give you?
Content generation, niche spread, news discussion, and automation.
The only thing that is missing from a community to become a blackhat tool, are the exploits. Having a community on a niche, means that you automatically have, buyers, sellers, news topic discussion, content, and the member’s sites to link to you, all in the same niche.
Where am I going with this?
- Do you need more visitors? Tell your members, or better yet train them, to social bookmark the content that is uploaded on the community.
- Do you need incoming links? Tell your members, or better yet train them, to ask for links, to put the link in their sigs on the fora they frequent, or if they have sites, link to the community.
- Do you need buyers? Use the mailing list!
- Do you need content? Have a contest!
- Do you need more members? Tell them to invite their friends.
If you take the time, to build and grow even a small community on a niche, you are alone no more. You can simply ask for something, or at least provide an incentive, monetary or simply e-peen, and the members will make it happen. This does not mean that you should lay on your ass and wait for results, but if you are creative, and focus the community’s attention to what you want, you will wake up the next day and find it right there.
You can work to generate one great piece of linkbait for example, or you can work harder, to create a tool and a platform for creative people to generate linkbait all day for years.
You think linkbait is hard? Ok, stick with content then. A content driven community dishes out more content than what you could ever generate yourself, without outsourcing the load.
I am amazed by the results of my newest project. 30 members, just 30, have already uploaded content, sparked up the forum, created 2 groups in hi5 and facebook, created 2 groups in my site, created a banner that they have on their sig in fora, linked to the site from their blogs, blogged about the community, started a buzz in various relevant fora, and invited 3 members.
Before you say that 30 members is nothing, bear in mind that the community is nichy niche. It is about a particular thing, on a small country, in a non english language. The maximum members available in the whole country are around 3000. So I am at a 1% coverage.
You can do the same. Work on gathering the critical mass for a community to thrive, and you are in for more mouths than you can feed.
Think bunnies. Think orgies.
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Popularity: 19% [?]
Oct 11
I have been using a Phpfox installation to create a niche community. Mind you, this is not a full fledged review, just some notes.
Well, in summary, Phpfox sucks for SEO.
- There are no url rewrites, and messing around with the code is bound to break something.
- The sitemap generated is great for text only sitemaps, but you cannot generate an xml one. (EDIT: now you can, see how to make xml sitemaps for phpfox)
- The internal urls forbid you from linking to any single file in the domain, practically the rewrites hijack anything to a useless page not found.
- The rss feeds it generates are not validated in any standard. They do work with rss readers though, but you simply cannot burn them.
Of course, I did not expect the script to be a breeze like wordpress, but some seo options would be nice. The pages do seem to get indexed though, they are just not seo optimized.
To its defense, Phpfox is a beauty to work with.
The installation is simple and fast. As soon as you are done, you have a mini Myspace in your hands. The default options are enough to run the majority of social sites, complete with a forum, PM, announcements, chat, polls, blog pages, member search and both video and image galleries.
Every hardcore webbuilder like me will want to hack it to death, but for a newbie, its amazing. The adminpanel gives you somewhat easy and almost complete control over everything, with no technical skills required.
There are some way better options, but if you want a “right off the box” social site, Phpfox is your friend. And get ready to dish out 500$-1000$ for modding it.
Popularity: 28% [?]
Oct 09
I recently started a community, on a specific niche. Anyway, I wanted to share with you the methods for bringing in members, rather than visitors to your communities.
- Find relevant fora, signup and locate an appropriate section to inform its members about your community. Don’t spam, inform politely. Tell them briefly what your community is about, and offer a means for anyone interested to contact you, email or IM.
- Use the google blog search, to find blogs on your niche. Post comments, if not insightful, make them at least engaging. Not a plain “Well said” etc.
- Social bookmarking. Bookmark a short well written copy that describes your community, and tag it relevantly. Members from social bookmarking sites do become members if they find something they like.
- Social networking sites work nice for this as well. There are groups for anything, find relevant ones on facebook for example, and inform its members about your community.
All of the above are simply common sense, but the point here is to try and engage people, not to simply drop a link.
Also, monitor all the places you posted for a few weeks, to answer any questions and indirectly bump your threads.
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Popularity: 10% [?]
