Lurkers and how to deal with them.

MischievousSpirit · 02-28-2007, 07:29 PM

What do you guys think of lukers who never participate in the forum? I find them very annoying, and it's hard to tell if it's the way my forum is; Or they just don't want to participate. What I wanna know, is how you guys deal with the lurkers? And how you keep people interested enough in your boards to post.

Pure Adapt · 02-28-2007, 08:55 PM

I use the Welcome Headers Hack to remind people who have registered but haven't posted in a couple weeks remind them to participate and post.

I think it's a great hack to use for increasing conversion ratios for guests, users awaiting email confirmation, people who never posted and people who haven't posted in a while. Hope that helps.

George

G_Man · 02-28-2007, 09:56 PM

I always try to see it from their point of view...

There are a few forums I lurk on. I really don't have much/anything to contribute, but enjoy reading material. And if you have Adsense and I click a your link you get paid for it whether or not I am registered.

So, in short, I guess they don't bother me. Although certain MODS, like the one Pure Adapt posted are good. I turn off some functions for members also, like viewing whosonline, etc. May as well cut down on bandwidth and queries for guests, while basically 'adding' features for registered members.

Code Monkey · 02-28-2007, 11:07 PM

You need to be very careful with that headers mod. You're talking about putting the exact same text content on the top of every single page for Google to see before any other content. It's a great idea just make sure you use an image of the text for guest viewing so the SE's ignore it.

Pure Adapt · 03-01-2007, 07:12 AM

CM that makes a lot of sense, thanks for the heads up, I'll be sure to change the code to make my headers an image now.

Thanks a lot!

George

MischievousSpirit · 03-01-2007, 08:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

You need to be very careful with that headers mod. You're talking about putting the exact same text content on the top of every single page for Google to see before any other content. It's a great idea just make sure you use an image of the text for guest viewing so the SE's ignore it.

I have the welcome headers installed, and wow.

I never thought of making an image of it instead of text. Could you give me tips on how to go about doing that?

Pure Adapt · 03-01-2007, 08:27 AM

I'm just planning on taking a Print Screen of the live text headers then cropping them in Photoshop and save for web as a gif. Probably faster than recreating them in full in PS.

George

Pure Adapt · 03-01-2007, 09:07 AM

Actually is there a better way to do this? I realized everyones resolution will be different and it doesn't look right 100% of the time doing it the way I had planned.

Any input is appreciated.

George

eliavsd · 03-01-2007, 12:24 PM

Unfortunately, I'm not very experienced with PHP & MySQL, so I don't have much to contribute to the forum.

Yvgeniy · 03-02-2007, 10:20 AM

I would say that you should edit the header to your likes and purposes so that it is both, optimized for the search engines and for the purposes of guests. This doesn't always work obviously, but using an image can be pretty problematic when you're dealing with different screen resolutions (people use different ones, so it'll appear different on everyone's screen and may annoyingly create horizontal scroll bars, etc).

Loco · 03-04-2007, 07:30 PM

here is a great "how to"
[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image! - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization Forums

I lucked out and a kind member made the one on my site

b4 that, I had just done what Pure said.. just took a screen shot of my site after I had the text how I wanted.. I do know enough to slice an image and add a link, but thats about it for PS.

Hope that helps

MischievousSpirit · 03-04-2007, 10:09 PM

Geez.. I wonder if I would be able to find someone more experienced with this to do it for me?

Loco · 03-04-2007, 11:22 PM

if you can get the image made, we can help with the html

MischievousSpirit · 03-05-2007, 01:45 AM

Ok, I'll work on that!

Pure Adapt · 03-05-2007, 09:31 AM

I followed the steps mentioned but my text came out very difficult to read, to the point you can't make it out. Any tips on font size / font choice?

TYIA,

George

Yvgeniy · 03-05-2007, 12:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loco

here is a great "how to"
[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image! - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization Forums

I lucked out and a kind member made the one on my site

b4 that, I had just done what Pure said.. just took a screen shot of my site after I had the text how I wanted.. I do know enough to slice an image and add a link, but thats about it for PS.

Hope that helps

If this link used to work it doesn't now... Repost please.

Pure Adapt · 03-05-2007, 12:26 PM

[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image! - vBulletin Search Engine Optimization Forums

Ignicoccus · 04-05-2007, 11:57 PM

Thanks for pointing this out, I did not realize this problem with welcome headers. Something I will surely change on my form.

Taipa · 04-23-2007, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pure Adapt

I use the Welcome Headers Hack to remind people who have registered but haven't posted in a couple weeks remind them to participate and post.

I think it's a great hack to use for increasing conversion ratios for guests, users awaiting email confirmation, people who never posted and people who haven't posted in a while. Hope that helps.

George

I use the Welcome Headers mod on two different forums I run.
On one forum, the members loved it and posting and registration increased. On the other forum, the members hated it because it (apparently) made them feel as if they were being reprimanded for not posting in a while. So it depends on your membership if it'll help or not. I would think that it would help on most forums; that one forum of mine has an odd group of members.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

You need to be very careful with that headers mod. You're talking about putting the exact same text content on the top of every single page for Google to see before any other content. It's a great idea just make sure you use an image of the text for guest viewing so the SE's ignore it.

What a good point! I would never have thought of that! Thanks!

missionhockey21 · 04-27-2007, 10:44 AM

There are going to people who lurk on your forums no matter how great it is, as your forums increase in size so do the amount of lurkers. I think there are ways you can encourage posting, from the header images mentioned (although I really don't think the effect is as great as some claim) to going to methods of "punishing" those with low activity levels by preventing certain forum access or privileges. If you're a smaller forum, and you notice someone who only posts once in a blue moon you could always engage them to develop a connection with them so they hopefully more at home at the forum and thus will post more.

da420 · 05-05-2007, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Code Monkey

You need to be very careful with that headers mod. You're talking about putting the exact same text content on the top of every single page for Google to see before any other content. It's a great idea just make sure you use an image of the text for guest viewing so the SE's ignore it.

Yes, I use an image for my welcome header for guests.

As for the lurkers, continue making threads, and making content worthy of commenting on and they will begin to participate. Some lurkers just need time, but often become your best members.

m_k · 05-30-2007, 12:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yvgeniy

I would say that you should edit the header to your likes and purposes so that it is both, optimized for the search engines and for the purposes of guests

First of all thanks CM for pointing this out - I have a stock copy of those welcome messages on several forums atm...

I think the most important thing here is not to have duplicate content which can be found elsewhere and therefore hurt you with search engines - as long as you customize the text, I don't see why it is necessary to change it to an image file.

Code Monkey · 05-30-2007, 05:07 PM

It does hurt you because Google sees the same text beginning on every page you have and pretty much takes a crap on you for it.

m_k · 05-31-2007, 02:03 AM

there is a feature in the latest release of that hack to only show the messages once per session, which I have just enabled as well as rewriting the text of the different messages

presumably a robot would also only see one message while spidering the site in this case?

Code Monkey · 05-31-2007, 06:11 AM

If it's cookie or javascript based it will most likely not work with a search engine. But you do want you want it's your site. Me, I just make it a mapped image and I don't have to presume anything.

DJ RRebel · 01-01-2008, 10:39 PM

Wow .. I hacked my forum's templates myself to get this sort of thing in place, but I never thought of how it would affect search engines.

Seems vBulletin is able to identify most spiders .. wouldn't it simply be most effective to have the hack coded in a way that it simply show nothing for spiders?

I wonder if anyone ever proposed development of a "spider" usergroup over at vBulletin.com? Seems you could tweak your forums quite a bit to be more search engine friendly if that were the case?

LBC · 01-03-2008, 08:44 AM

Lurkers is a difficult one.

I'm running a fitness-based board and for the most part it's a fairly advanced group of people. We just added a couple new sub forums - a pictures/video forum and more importantly a Beginner Training & Nutrition forum, which hopefully is less intimidating. So far it seems to have helped a bit.

Yvgeniy · 01-03-2008, 11:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DJ RRebel

Wow .. I hacked my forum's templates myself to get this sort of thing in place, but I never thought of how it would affect search engines.

Seems vBulletin is able to identify most spiders .. wouldn't it simply be most effective to have the hack coded in a way that it simply show nothing for spiders?

I wonder if anyone ever proposed development of a "spider" usergroup over at vBulletin.com? Seems you could tweak your forums quite a bit to be more search engine friendly if that were the case?

Don't spiders already fall into their own group? But I do know what you mean. It would be nice to have more options for spiders, especially as far as the headers are concerned. Sounds like a pretty simple feature if implemented as a stand alone. Perhaps an idea for a mod.

zeus_r6 · 04-11-2008, 01:31 PM

I was wondering what was tripping up the SE's on my forums....thanks so much for the image how-to!

IzNChar · 04-21-2008, 09:30 PM

I have alot of lurkers on my forum also and its really annoying being a parenting forum and having strangers read about us and our kids lives so we restrict newbies to very limited areas where they talk about themselves and tell us more about them before they are allowed on more of the forum.

The mod you are suggesting on here sounds good though. I want to look into that more, saves me PMing them all the time asking them to please post or they will have to be deleted.