[BoardTracker]

Originally Posted by WritersBeat

does this integrate everything with boardtracker.com?

I don't think it's fair if it does. I mean sure you made the hack and all, but I want everything to be local and help my seo rating, not someone else's.

Well first of all - you know what SEO means? Search Engine Optimization. You know what BoardTracker is? Its a Search Engine..

Secondly, tagging for seo is the wrong reason.. its like putting wheels on a car to make it look nice.. sure your car may look nicer with wheels on but thats not their primary purpose! Tagging is for organizing data, its for board users to build a folksonomy for board users. Its so they can easily find relevant threads and with the tagclouds also they can find 'hot' threads. If you provide your users with a better way to find what they want and with a way to contribute to that effort, you will have happier and more loyal users.

You worry that using this mod will send traffic to boardtracker? Where do you think traffic on boardtracker then goes? Since its a search engine for boards, the traffic goes back to the boards!

If SEO is your chief concern then you should understand that the more tags you create using this mod, the more links you will have from boardtracker to your board - this is good for your SEO! If you do it entirely internally, then what you have is a bunch of extra links on your board, pointing to other pages on your board - you already have lots of internal links, vbulletin has numerous links to threads/posts from all sorts of places within your board.. the last thing you need now for seo on your board is more links from your own board, what you need is links from other sites like boardtracker.

Look at this..

http://www.boardtracker.com/tag/music

The 'music' tag is popular on boardtracker now and appears in the tag cloud on our index AND on tag clouds on other boards who choose to display global clouds. You think those boards listed in the music tag search result don't get traffic now? I bet they do.. but don't take my word for it, here's what one board owner (whose board appears in that music tag result) had to say..

"I'm loving all of it. I've had 23 new registrations in two days."
http://forums.invisionize.com/index....&#entry1673310

Here's some more reasons for being in boardtracker and using our mods..

95 referrals from boardtracker..
http://www.redflagdeals.com/forums/m...p?userid=32220

112 referrals..
http://vbforums.com/member.php?u=61394

Originally Posted by AboveTopSecret

Release this as a Non integrated mod - or else it should be deleted. We should never install a mod that makes us dependant in another site - or help another websites SEO.

This is extremely shortsighted.. much of SEO depends on links from/to other sites. Without such links you have no SEO and you will have less traffic. Your board also depends on many things to survive and grow including links from other sites, software from other companies, hosting, servers, etc etc. Your board cannot live in a vacuum.

Also note if you look at this mod you will see that you can configure it to show only threads from your board or threads from several boards which YOU CHOOSE or it can show threads from all boards.

However a key feature of 'web2.0' is the community/social aspect, its about social search and social networks and empowering the users. The users will decide on the tags and they will be the ones using tags to find what they want. Even though a board is in itself a community, it is an isolated one and as such it risks losing members to those who are more open and connect with others and of course you obviously make it more difficult for potential new members to ever find your board if you are not part of the network.

Its important, even critical to network with other boards.. you cant lock your members in by 'hiding' threads from other boards that may interest them.. this is no way to build loyalty and activity within your board. Your members will still find them with google or yahoo, they do know the 'interweb' exists beyond your board and so its better if you are the one that provides them with the links to other relevant threads rather then them just going elsewhere to find it.

Tagging is good for boards, but tagging in isolation defeats the purpose..