Comments on: Drive-By Shooting Special: Black Bus

By: Afternoon Reading | Link Love Friday

Afternoon Reading | Link Love Friday — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:11:06 +0000

[...] Men with Pens Drive by Shootings have made a welcome return. Yay! Their hit this week was…a black bus. Yeah Harry doesn’t like public transport, he much prefers vehicles of the two wheeled [...]

By: Peter Gulka

Peter Gulka — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:48:12 +0000

Hey everyone. It’s been a few months but the new Blackbus.org has been launched. I’ve been focusing on the functionality and backend over the last week and now its time to review the dive by and get some of the design elements and site basics implemented. I welcome everyone to pop by and have a look.

By: Andy with network marketing

Andy with network marketing — Mon, 04 May 2009 03:23:06 +0000

Wow, What an incredible way to get the point across about design. i have never taken the time to really look at a site like that before. I'm going to visit mine right now like a first time visitor and see what I think. Thanks for the insight into design. It is like pornography, I know it when I see it but I can't describe what it is. Andy with network marketing´s last blog post...MLM Network Marketing Success with Network Leads

By: Dot

Dot — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:23:39 +0000

Another courageous soul braves the tell-the-truth-it-will-be-good-for-you honesty of the Men. As with Simon Cowell’s comments on American Idol, the truth is what helps most, but it isn’t always as palatable as a friendly nudge. I hope the blogger will survive the bombing. And I’m relating to Harry a lot.

As usual, this one was very entertaining. I got the “bus” when I saw the blog title and the initials were b-u-s, but I still didn’t know what Blackbaud was.

By: Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach

Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach — Fri, 01 May 2009 09:11:12 +0000

Having just started running a forum myself, I can tell you that

http://www.vbulletin.org
http://www.vbseo.com/f2/
http://www.vbadvanced.com/forum/

is a godsend (and that James’ advice is always spot-on!).

To add a more descriptive title, go to your AdminCP and select:

vBulletin Options -> General Setting

You’ll see a spot to add your Meta Description. Mine is,
Income Fitness – The Definitive Resource for being successful online -
http://www.virtual-coach.com/forums/

The folks at VBSEO, VBulletin.org and VBAdvanced are helpful beyond belief (vbulletin.com support is also quite good). Feel free to ask me any questions about fine-tuning it – will be happy to help out.

It’s character-building indeed to run them,

Barbara

Barbara Ling, Virtual Coach´s last blog post…How can I tell if a Work at Home Business Opportunity is a scam?

By: Paul Morriss

Paul Morriss — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:40:35 +0000

It's a secret bus. If you know what it's for you're allowed on. I like the bus. Paul Morriss´s last blog post...Update on Sign Language project

By: Mer

Mer — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:38:51 +0000

Dear Men, Bloglines does not appear able to find you and ihelplessly displays only an exclamation point. If I click on your blog title, however, I am brought directly to your sight. Hence, the URL would seem correct. ::throws up hands:: Mer, stalker friend of Amy's Mer´s last blog post...In His Own Defense, Cheney Requests Classified Torture Memos That Appalled Others

By: Kaushik

Kaushik — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:09:51 +0000

Hey, I wish you’d drive by my hood and shoot up my site! I’m thinking of putting nonsense pseudo-pithiness on my welcome screen–stuff I can steal from the internet, like
she sat there with her legs ajar…
he fell ten stories and his body hit the pavement like a hefty bag full of vegetable soup…
she grew on him like a colony of e. coli

what do you think?

On SEO–I think the whole SEO thing is hyped up. Google has giga-bucks and their smart engineers’ primary job is to relate content to search strings…content is it. Still, I do use all-in-one seo etc., just in case…

I always learn something here. Thanks!

Kaushik´s last blog post…Over onâ€¦

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:41:21 +0000

@Peter: Having run a few forums in our day we know they’re very niche oriented and the people that use them usually already know what’s going on before they get there. What we’ve done with our creative writing forum is we created a main page with at the very least a brief explanation as to what the forum is about and then a link to the forum itself in the main page navigation. James would have stats on whether it works or not, but from what I’ve seen, I believe it does help.

By: Peter Gulka

Peter Gulka — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:36:26 +0000

The meta tag thing really bugs me. It is supposed to be an automatic function of the vBulletin software but for some reason it isn’t working. I also have a tool called vBSEO handling some automatic SEO functions which is also supposed to be beefing that stuff up. I suspect the /forum/index.php will have better meta information in it.

Marc – I know the site isn’t what it could be and I came here for fearless criticism. Let me have it.

Kelly – Awesome notes – thanks! The site exists to serve people who work at non-profit organizations who use Blackbaud fundraising software. The software is best-in-class, but very expensive and most orgs only use 5-10% of what it can do. I started the site to try and help people work with each other to squeeze more life and value out of the software. We are not affiliated with Blackbaud at all. If you don’t know who Blackbaud is or what they do then the site isn’t for you. It’s a very niche market we serve.

All your other observations are casualties of a couple platform changes over the last 3 years. The site is a hobby more than anything. I’ve never made a concerted effort until now to get all these things set up properly. The site has always been about the forum more than anything. I slapped a front page on with a derivative of the forum software as an afterthought. The site is getting enough traffic now that this needs to be revisited.

I’m going to start to get the site functionality tweaked up (broken links, etc) first and then hopefully find some cash for a redesigned template for the vBulletin forum software.

A question – If the site is primarily a forum is having a front page a help or a hindrance?

Peter Gulka´s last blog post…Importing Recurring Gifts