On the right path

Hi Guys,

I have just started a forum a month back and I am happy with the progress we are making but there is always room for improvement.

Can you please review my site and advise where the improvements can be made.

Thanks

Bump?

You haven't mentioned your website URL, do you mean Accord Owners Club - The Exclusive Honda Accord UK Forum ?

Here is the critique for Accord Owners Club - The Exclusive Honda Accord UK Forum :

- Ok, Lets Start with removing unnecessary contents for guests , there lots of unnecessary contents for guests in vBulletin so we should remove them using <vb:if> commands ... some of these contents are :
User Avatars , What's going on box , Posting Rules Box, Icons Legend Box, Last forum and threads posts and such. The reason that I say these are unnecessary content is because the google bots always view your website as guests so removing these content will give you 2 positive points : 1.Your pages will be loaded faster which is a great thing for SEO, 2.They will be concentrated on the main content of your website.

- Try to use a forum url structure either with www or non-www (I suggest you to use non-WWW coz WWW is deprecated) => [How to] Setup www.yourdomain.com or yourdomain.com (www vs. non-www) - With .htaccess 301 redirects

- Try to include only Showthread / forumdisplay / blog pages into vBSEO sitemap

- Try to use a CDN service (like MaxCDN.com) using vbseo CDN feature.

- Try to validate all of your style pages like forum home , show threads, forum displays , etc => [Invalid] Markup Validation of http://accordownersclub.co.uk/forums - W3C Markup Validator

- Try to submit your website in Web Directories like DMOZ.



And you can also check your website here : WebPagetest - Website Performance and Optimization Test to test your pageload performance, google loves fast websites so always try to improve your forum's performance.


Good Luck,
Ali Ch.

Hi CJ,

I like the "Welcome" animation in the bottom right corner. I like the fact that the location is unobtrusive as opposed to it being in the top or in the middle of the screen. And since you are using this animation, you could consider removing the vBulletin's Welcome block. That will save more than 100 pixels of vertical space from every page of your site.

Originally Posted by A.Chakery

You haven't mentioned your website URL, do you mean Accord Owners Club - The Exclusive Honda Accord UK Forum ?

D-oh that does help.. LOL

Hi Ali & Marvin,

Ali:- all your suggestion make logical sense I will be getting them implemented as for DMOZ that one the first things I did before we went live ,but I have not heard anything and was told not to make repeated registration attempts. That was three months ago so when you decide to make another attempt without alienating them?

Marvin:- , thanks for your tip that does put things in perspective and yes I am happy with the positioning I was advise the same my my expert colleague.. I am off to have a word with him and thank him.

Thanks for taking time to give me you feedback it is appreciated.

Its my Pleasure CJ

About the DMOZ : To be honest I have no idea how their qualification works, they have some editors so it depends on the decisions of their editors, my website was qualified after 3-4 months I think , DMOZ does not give you so much traffic but It will give you great Page Rank (depending on which Directory you signed up)...

Please feel free to request for more suggestions when you are done with items that I mentioned in my previous post

Good Luck ..

Sure will do Ali I will be will be back.


Thank you