Forum Housekeeping

[Kenadian]

Hello all,

I'll be performing a fair amount of forum cleanup over the next month or so to prepare for a move to a new Webhost.

For this reason you'll likely see some changes in our current forum offerings.

As an example, the ARMA Forum no longer exists. It is now folded into a more General Category called "Milsim". This offers us more flexibility when it comes to discussing other games such as Escape from Tarkov rather than just posting them in the General Gaming Forum as before.

I'll also likely remove the Dirt Rally Forum as it only contains 3 topics. These can easily be found via the Forum Search function should anyone need to find them.

Lastly, all spam and self promotional nonsese removed by Mods/Admins will be hard deleted as there's no reason to keep this stuff on the database. This could equate to a change in some users post counts as your posts too will be lost when the thread is deleted.

This shouldn't affect anyone's post count too drastically however I thought it worth mentioning.

 

[Nejtun]

Good to hear as sometimes things were getting a little difficult to find! On that note though, the Dirt Rally Forum is relatively new which would probably account for only having a few threads, I thought the whole reason we created that one was to bring in some interest and build from there?

 

[Kenadian]

Good to hear as sometimes things were getting a little difficult to find! On that note though, the Dirt Rally Forum is relatively new which would probably account for only having a few threads, I thought the whole reason we created that one was to bring in some interest and build from there?

The reason I added the Dirt Rally Forum is I was under the impression Dirt Rally was something the Community was very interested in. I was told there would be a lot of valuable content that needed its own forum to keep things orderly and easy to find.

I created the forum on that pretext alone but that's not normally how it's done.

You don't build forums to gain interest, you build forums in response to interest.

A separate Super 00ber SEO'd forum does you no good unless there's regular, fresh and unique content in it. Without that, Google won't send spiders to it regularly as there's nothing to index and nothing to list in the SERPS.

It's just the wrong way to do things.

If you start building forums in hopes that "people will come", they won't and you'll have carpel tunnel from all the mouse scrolling your forced to do.

Given the amount of new posts we create around here it would almost be in our best interests to fold most (if not all of it) into 1 PC Gaming Forum.

Personally I don't think the forum is too large or diluted with dead sub-forums which is why I leave it the way it is.

If you've ever wondered why some of the Internets largest forums archive/auto-lock or, at least ask you consider a new topic it's for this very reason. All Websites online need regular content to keep the spiders coming and keep them relevant in the SERPS.

The only exception to this rule that I'm aware of is creating identical or near identical threads/topics. Allowed to continue these can come with enormous penalties for duplicate content that ultimately hurt your site listings regardless of amount of content being created.

 

[Kinger]

I’m just wondering......will I be able to find posts about butt zits in the new location?

 

[Kenadian]

I’m just wondering......will I be able to find posts about butt zits in the new location?

Yep, the more the merrier.

 

[Nejtun]

Many things..

Fair enough ken, I thought I better voice what was in my head while it was fresh, incredibly your mega-answer has left me with zero questions (Nejt speechless, worth taking a screenshot)

Cheers! Looking forward to a tidier forum and the new hosting \o/

 

[Kenadian]

Fair enough ken, I thought I better voice what was in my head while it was fresh, incredibly your mega-answer has left me with zero questions (Nejt speechless, worth taking a screenshot)

Cheers! Looking forward to a tidier forum and the new hosting \o/

@Nejtun that's exactly what you keep doing too, not asking nearly always does more harm than good.

I've been doing this over 15 years now and fully admit I'm not an expert. Everything I know (or think I know) came from a lot of trial and error.

Did you know when I first started Lifesupporters.com I had so many forums to scroll through that I literally developed wrist issues from the constant scrolling?

...and it did that site no good.

That site got really busy at one point and it was each hand feeding the other. One hand created unique and informative content regularly while the other worked on best practices for SEO.

Combined they lead to success, on their own they're almost completely useless.

 

[Ogami Itto]

Would it be a net positive or negative to do with the Dirt Ralley forum what was done with the ArmA forum? Say stick it in a sub-forum called SimRacing?

 

[Skid_Marc_]

Would it be a net positive or negative to do with the Dirt Ralley forum what was done with the ArmA forum? Say stick it in a sub-forum called SimRacing?

TBF, we have so many sub-posts directly about iRacing, it really needs it's own folder... Between Special Events, BMW 120's, and the upcoming 2020 iRacing Endurance Series, not to mention any #PracticePals posts...

 

[Kenadian]

Would it be a net positive or negative to do with the Dirt Ralley forum what was done with the ArmA forum? Say stick it in a sub-forum called SimRacing?

Possibly but I'm unsure about how it would impact iRacing?

At the moment we do pretty well on some search terms in iRacing so moving that Forum into a sub of a broader Sim Racing Forum may do more harm than good.

If more people were interested in Assetto Corsa, Dirt Rally, Project Cars, and the like then I'd consider it but we really are an iRacing-centric Community (from a Sim Racing standpoint) so it's not a risk worth taking.

Also there's just not enough discussion on any other Racing Sim so even the best SEO Optimized Sim Racing Forum would still do us no good if nobody posts about Sim Racing outside of iRacing.

If this makes any sense.

 

[Kenadian]

Over the next few weeks you may see load/browse times dramatically increase during weeknight and/or weekend hours.

The reason is I'm pulling redundant backups of all sites (mine and clients) files and databases.

I'll then post about B2O as I need to reduce the amount of files and file storage on the Server.

This change will also occur at a site level as you'll no longer be able to upload 4K imagery. I also may adjust the file upload limitations in an attempt to lessen the amount of storage required to run B2O.

I'm looking to downgrade the Server package upon relocation to a new Host but need to claw back near 1 GB of storage in order to do so.