Please review my parents forum

[StarBuG]

Hi

I am running several forums, my newest baby is a forum for german parents to talk about medical topics around kids.

I really would like to get some feedback for my forum.

Some Infos:

• Site Name: Elternfragen.net - Das Forum für Eltern und die, die es noch werden wollen
(Parents questions - the forum for parents or for those who want to become parents)
• Language: German
• Description of forums topics: A Forum for parents to ask (medical) questions, talk to other parents about health topics, raising children, etc.
• URL: Elternfragen.net - Für Eltern mit medizinischen Fragen rund um Kinder
• Date of Launch: November 2006

Stats
Total Members: 161
Total Posts: 4,048
Total Topics: 422

Even though the forum is in German I think a review should be possible

I would like to know what you think when you first visit the forum.
What impression do you get?

How do you feel about the look of the forum?

Do you have any suggestions how to improve the forum even more?

Any feedback is welcome

StarBuG

[TheComputerGuy]

I think the overall design is very nice, and clean. I like the face the number of replies and threads are taken off.

I love the icons in the forum description! I think you might want to clean the footer up a little bit, but that is just my opinion.

I like the site overall and think it will do well.

[StarBuG]

Thanks, I hope so too

[briansol]

I would:

remove these links:
alth On the Net Foundation. Partnerseiten:
Eltern Kinder Familie | Lippen-Kiefer-Gaumenspalten Forum | Forum Schwangerschaft
Das Gesundheitsforum | Eltern Community | JamSessionFFM.de | Diabetesfragen.net



Sonstige Links: Wurzelimperium | Kindergeld | koinos.de - Allroundforum | Das Krabbelforum | Kredit



even if they are your sites and non-paid, they have negative seo impact.

turn off and disable the archive /archive links in footer

[woostar]

I would:

remove these links:
alth On the Net Foundation. Partnerseiten:
Eltern Kinder Familie | Lippen-Kiefer-Gaumenspalten Forum | Forum Schwangerschaft
Das Gesundheitsforum | Eltern Community | JamSessionFFM.de | Diabetesfragen.net



Sonstige Links: Wurzelimperium | Kindergeld | koinos.de - Allroundforum | Das Krabbelforum | Kredit



even if they are your sites and non-paid, they have negative seo impact.

How do you figure? I was under the impression that they only had a substandard SEO effect on the sites it links to. 99% of sites have sitewide outgoing links (by default, whether a copyright link or multiple) without a negative impact.

[StarBuG]

I would:

turn off and disable the archive /archive links in footer

Why do you think that the archive in the footer should be turned off?

[Brandon Sheley]

there is a large thread on "why you should turn off the archive" probably in the articles.
I think the over all style is very nice, I would think about removing the site name from the forumdisplay and showthread. This will give more targeted title tags for your post and the forum. Be careful tho, think it over.. changing the title tag will require all of those links to be reindexed

I have my archive enabled, but disallowed in the robots.txt file, to add to the archive question.

[Joe Ward]

[How To] Determine How Much Traffic is From Your vBulletin Archive Pages with Google Analytics

Your Site Review - Stuff to Do First

[StarBuG]

Ok, after determining that only 0,01% of all traffic goes to my archive I turned it off completely.

Thanks for the tip.

Any other thoughts?

[Joe Ward]

Wow - great call. Given that traffic was so minimal, it would not make sense to keep those pages there reducing the crawling efficiency.

But keep us posted on your results in the next 30-60 days, particularly long tail stats, so that we can see if it creates any short term impact for you.