Amy Winehouse Forums (AWF)

[AWF]

Home: http://www.amywinehouseforum.co.uk
Forum: http://www.amywinehouseforum.co.uk/forum
A message forum for fans of Amy Winehouse to come and discuss her life and work.

[cheat-master30]

Okay, first of all, it looks pretty good to me, at least design wise. Since my knowledge of the topic and what the fans like is non existant, I can't really say if it captures the mood the members expect, so well done anyway.

Looks good activity wise, and all the forums are filled up with posts. Member count and post count is good as well, so well done on that regard.

Smilies are good, although you may want a few related to the forum's topic and music as a whole, since they're a bit generic, and it's a good move to have a video vB code for a music based forum.

Nice default avatar choices as well, plenty of them being about the celebrity which the forum is about.

However, while the splash page and image looks nice, it's pretty much useless as far as both members and SEO is concerned, so I'd think having a home page with more in the way of content would help in both these aspects.

All in all though, good, not much to criticise.

[AWF]

thanks for your comments. :)

Smilies are good, although you may want a few related to the forum's topic and music as a whole, since they're a bit generic, and it's a good move to have a video vB code for a music based forum.
i do need to add some amy winehouse related smilies but there arent any. one of the members did make some a while back but i lost them when we moved over to vB. :(
what's a video vB code?

[cheat-master30]

I meant the vB Tube BB code. That's a good thing. As for smilies... what do you mean by losing them when you moved to vB?

[AWF]

the forum used to use a free software called MyBB. but as the forum grew i thought id move over to paid software.
anyway your post encouraged me to try and find the old amy winehouse smilies and i did!! there's only 5 of them but better than nothing i guess. so thanks. :)

[Brandon Sheley]

I suggest removing the "powered by vbulletin" on all your forum pages, in the title ;)
It will help as far as SEO goes
as well as your "have to accept rules" hack, this is killing your SEO as well :(
the only thing that is getting indexed on your forum, is the youtube vids.
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aamywinehouseforum.co.uk%2Fforum%2F&sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1B3GGGL_enUS256US256
you might as well have a private forum..

[AWF]

how do i remove the 'powered by vbulletin'?
ill change the rules option.
thanks.

[cheat-master30]

Under vBulletin Options, there's somewhere an option to change the forum title, and if that doesn't work, look for <title> in the templates, and remove the powered_by_vbulletin phrase from the title.

[AWF]

thanks. :)

[Brandon Sheley]

actually you search in the languages in phrases for "powered by"
you'll see
{1} - Powered by vBulletin

then you'll remove everything but the

{1}


but actaully that doesn't even matter if you have that "force read this thread" hack installed,, the bots don't even see your forums by the results I posted above :(

btw.. your site does look sharp :) it looks like your members really enjoy the place and the blog :)

[cheat-master30]

I can't even see the rules thing, and I saw the forums and topics perfectly fine.

[Brandon Sheley]

I can't even see the rules thing, and I saw the forums and topics perfectly fine.

well I don't know what thread I looked at the asked me to look at the rules, I do some some forum pages are indexed. I just think you would have more if it was removed or modified.. maybe just show it to the regular users, and it looks like it's a one time thing.

don't forget about the search engine traffic :)

[AWF]

i removed the 'force users to accept rules' option.

btw.. your site does look sharp it looks like your members really enjoy the place and the blog
thankyou!! :)

[KTBleeding]

i do need to add some amy winehouse related smiliesHahaha.. I totally just pictured a forum with little Amy faces as the smilies. Missing teeth and all. : shudder :

[AWF]

no, no, no.

[catseye]

Forums looks pretty clean overall. It's not going to innovate the forum world, but it's a good clean forum that is easy to use.

[Pejorist]

Cool.

[HATEWILL!]

there's really a fan base for her?

[AWF]

Wow, thank you people :)

What a coincidence we got a mention today; this is the first time I have logged in here since myself and Rugged took over the admin role from Clare in December.

I'm not *brand* new to FTP etc as I used to run a depression support forum a few yers back, but I'm currently undergoing a crash course/refresher and so might be seen about asking very 'n00b' questions in the coming days... !

Thanks again for the positive feedback.

D
(Mama Haze)