Please review TardFarmers (www.tardfarmers.org)

[Doctor Dan]

An invitation to review TardFarmers (http://www.tardfarmers.org).

Description:
TardFarmers is a forum website for the discussion of current events, politics, and other topics of interest with minimal moderation. Here you have the freedom to discuss and debate without constantly being censored and stifled by moderators for being "too controversial," "rude," or "insensitive." Feel free to speak your mind and unleash your thoughts!

TF has been up and running for approximately 3 months.

There are two styles (themes) available to review:

"Plasmatic" is a dark style with light text. It is based on a style called "Plasma" from eXtremepixels with a good bit of additional customization, redesign of icons and buttons, etc.

"Oivariant" is a light style with dark text. It is based on a style called "Oivar" (also from eXtremepixels), also with additional customization.

The two styles are supposed to complement each other in terms of overall color scheme.

Also check out the "Tagged Image Verification (http://www.tardfarmers.org/forum/register.php)" page used during registration to prevent spambots from signing up. It's a fully custom mod which I wrote.

Thanks in advance for your comments!

- Dan

[kp^]

Nice site overall... But I suggest not to have a splash page. So many people put in a splash page, but why? Put content there instead of some dummy page that links to more content.

Have the website just come up with the forums.. Less clicks :)

I've actaully got plasma as one of the skins on my site. I have not kept most of the skin, but it was a base that I used. Great skin!

[zazo]

Agreed with kp, I also come to know that such front pages which are empty can effect search engine rankings. All over its nice site and you did a hard work in making it so active in so less time.
All the best!

[Doctor Dan]

Thanks for the comments! I have a number of keywords embedded as plain text on the splash screen, so I imagine that search engines would index them (unlike meta keywords, which most search engines ignore).

I must admit that I like the splash screen from an aesthetic point of view... it's somewhat enigmatic and intriguing if you've never visited the site before. Of course, I imagine that most members have either the vBa or forum main page bookmarked for immediate access.

- Dan

[Greek76]

Good looking site. I must agree with the others about the splash. It looks good but it can hurt you in the long run.

[Doctor Dan]

Good looking site. I must agree with the others about the splash. It looks good but it can hurt you in the long run.

Thanks!

Is the splash screen mostly an issue for search website indexing, or is it problematic for other reasons?

- Dan

[brnoe]

Looks great Dan, I was looking around for the Tagged Image Verification CAPTCHA addon you had listed and found this post. Enjoying the site so far.

[Josh1]

Thanks for the comments! I have a number of keywords embedded as plain text on the splash screen, so I imagine that search engines would index them (unlike meta keywords, which most search engines ignore).

I must admit that I like the splash screen from an aesthetic point of view... it's somewhat enigmatic and intriguing if you've never visited the site before. Of course, I imagine that most members have either the vBa or forum main page bookmarked for immediate access.

- Dan

Stuffing keywords in pages like this can get you banned from google.

[KTBleeding]

Stuffing keywords in pages like this can get you banned from google.Not only that, but it's not really how Google even works.

[cheat-master30]

Splash pages are not a good idea, as said by a whole load of designers and those in usability, and keyword stuffing on a splash page is both pointless and could get you banned from Google. It's also pretty silly to have a splash page, then a portal and then the forums if the forums are the only attraction on your site, so remove the splash page or replace it with a more informative, useful page and remove the portal.

You may also want to upgrade to 3.7, or at least 3.6.10 because a supposed security flaw was found in versions of vBulletin before that one. Don't worry, there aren't too many style changes.

You should also change the welcome, which is very vague (you MAY have to register before)... and to be honest, the stats are a bit much. On the good side, you've got a decent site style, good site activity, nice enough smilies and you've not just shoved things like stats at the top of the page, so well done. Oh, and it's a good idea, like you've done to keep the amount of forums down when your site is new, so congrats again.

[Doctor Dan]

Thanks for your comments!

What do you think about using a 301 Redirect to skip over the splash screen, as described here (http://www.stevenhargrove.com/redirect-web-pages/)?

It would be very simple to do, since I could remove the index.htm splash screen and replace it with an index.php file with the redirection:


<?
header("HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Status: 301 Moved Permanently");
header("Location: http://www.tardfarmers.org/forum/index.php");
exit(0);
?>


Search engines should pick up on the 301 Redirect and index accordingly.

- Dan

[cheat-master30]

You could just remove it after the 301 redirect has changed the forum rank accordingly, and use the forum as the root page or something...

[Doctor Dan]

You could just remove it after the 301 redirect has changed the forum rank accordingly, and use the forum as the root page or something...

Is there any issue with just leaving the 301 Redirect in place permanently?

- Dan

[DieselMinded]

Looks great , i liked the non default style better personally

[cheat-master30]

Is there any issue with just leaving the 301 Redirect in place permanently?

- Dan

I don't think so, it's just not an ideal situation.

[kofoid]

I like it as well, but agree with diesellminded about the style