Changes to SEO forum - how and why

Hey guys,

I'd like to take a quick moment and explain how this came about. I think its important that you folks understand how and why this happened.

First of all, all of the modifications (including the nofollows) were not done explicitly for the SEO Chat forums. As you know, we own several forums and they all run off the same exact codebase. What this means, is the code is the same for all of the forums. This way, when we make a change, all forums receive that same change. So, in essence, nothing that has changed here was designed or targetted at the SEO Chat forum, or its users.

Secondly, we've been making some extensive changes to our forums to help our rankings in the search engines. Im sure youve noticed the new URLS and the sitemaps on the homepages just to name a couple. We have done extensive research and are slowly converting all of our forums to encompass all we have learned.

One of the things we have been trying to fix is the number of links going out that are followed. There are literally TONS of posts across our forums that have links in them. In order to catch all of these, I made a modification to the "URL BBCODE" to automatically nofollow any links.

Sigs, it seems, are became an unfortunate casualty of this. The same bbcode logic is used inside posts AND inside sigs.

Anyways, thats pretty much what brought us to the point of where we are now. Ive been doing some thinking on this, and I think I would be able to code it where we could allow 1 or 2 links in a sig to allow following (and hence give backlinks). It would take me a bit of work, but I'm sure I could make this work. We might be able to come to some common ground on this. (For those people with a bunch of links in thier sigs, Im sorry). I'm sure if this would bring back some of our members and even mods, it would be incentive enough for it to be done.

Anyways, I wanted to make sure you all understood why and how this all happened, and get your thoughts on my suggestion.

Reply in this thread, or PM me

Thanks...

Rich

Wow, so whats the new rules on live links?

Rich... you may be locking the barn door after all the horses have fled. Your information should have been shared with the membership BEFORE the exodus began. It is a shame that foresight was missing. SEOrs and webmasters are into links much more than any other forum at DevShed.

People were commenting only yesterday how this is a real community driven forum.
In reality is wasnt and never will be and it is a business.
A business that throws some of its best customers out just becouse they want.

Give this a few days and it will all settle down.
Most of the highly respected members have moved on or been banned so they will setup their own community driven forum (details to follow) and people will forget this ever happend.

People dont like change.
And they dont like to see people getting banned but this is afterall a business and the hard truth is that the members are just pawns in the game to line peoples pockets.

Jon... I have been visiting blogs and other boards. Everyone is really pissed... I am here but, for the life of me, cannot understand how this was planned and implemented the way it was.

IMHO, I would make the changes anyway. Those that feel bruised may come back. I don't know, but the effort to make amends should be put forward by Dev Shed.

I recommend that you make the change -- Make it, and they will come.

I can honestly tell you that the oversight on this was definitely on the coding staff. This is the third forum that has been updated, and its become basically a mechanical process that we have been going through on each one. Seo Chat was just next in our list to do, and was done like the others.

That being said, we are a business and we do operate as such. At the same time, we must recognize that our sites will be strongest and fairest while being run by the community. Im sure we can find the common ground to benefit us both, if we work at it.

I will do anything in my power to make amends, and bring our community back together.

I have suggested the edit to the sigs as listed above. I can tell you this is quite an involved modification based on how links are implemented in vbulletin, but one I will happily do especially if we can patch things up...

My guess is that you may need to worry less about that in the future...

You sent all my friends away!

How can you explain that?

I don't care about links - I don't link out from here. But you sent my friends away.

For that, there is no forgiveness.

I don't know who you are or why you are carrying a 10 reputation - did you ever look into the meaning of the word?

But you did something wrong.

It's so easy to say that "we did this for all our sites" - but then you made a mistake for EVERY one of them - many mistakes. Not just this one.

It's sad, so sad, it's a sad, sad situation - and it's getting more and more absurd!!!

You've made me sad...

Wow, I missed alot today. Why were people banned? And who banned them? I found who some of them were, and searched their posts, but nothing to enlighten me. Were they PM'ing mods with vulgarities or something...?

-Michael

It's a bit funny, we are all trying here to help eachother rank higher. In our efforts we generated tons of quality content that eventually made seochat rank extremely high. Mention the #1 for SEO for instance. And now the forum owners are the ones telling us they are not gonna help us anymore?

We all know the signature links are virtually useless in our efforts to rank 'somewhere', but all bits help. And then some more BS about the impossibilities, that there was no other way then to add the rel nofollow to the sigs as well and contradicting yourself only a few sentences later, do you honestly think we're all a bunch of morons here??

I've seen some stupid things in my life but you my friend... You outrank 'em all, congrats!

Rich... Quite a few have already loudly proclaimed that they have left. Many of those will never return.

Now that the dust is settling the main lingering problem is going to be the impression that SEO Chat members are taken for granted and treated shabbily when a heated discussion that involves DevShed occurs. At least on the surface, in this last uproar, it appeared that very high-handed dictatorial methods were used. Whether intended or not... that is the way it appears.

Make the changes you plan on making and move on. You will have to do some rebuilding. That always occurs after the impact of a poor business decision is felt. Such is life.

Well IMH Professional Opinion the sigs are totally useless... they are merely a placebo [for the reason people want them].

A repetitive link has no value after the frist 1 [maybe a few].

but switch the model around - 1 external link per member - compounded by their thread starters rated by the membership [before they appear] that something worth having.

Adds value to the active membership - "the quality posters" and adds value to SEOChat since the only way you get the extra internal links - is put your heart and sole into "quality".

Business is business and the best business people take disadvantage and turns it to competitive advantage.

It looks like changes were made with out input- bad move!

Since we can have live links now:
SEOmoz.org's Following on this Issue

Fathom... I agree: sigs are useless. I don't use them. Hula hoops are useless too, but the kids love them. Get my meaning?

Wow, how about thread where JCaputo (JGestapo) says that it was your decision and it is not reversible? So which is it?