Webmaster Tips & Tricks - The Webmaster’s Blog

Last night the folks who manage the payment gateway for the vBulletin purchases rejected my card as being unsecure (this after purchasing some scripts already with it). Anyway… Jelsoft can say goodbye to my money after this. Since my paypal account will receive the necessary funding in 3-4 days, I’d be able to make payment, but I don’t want to anymore.

Just because I wasn’t able to sleep too fast last night, I had some ideas about Lyrics and Talk. The forums have been stagnant for some time and I just got tired of creating threads. So .. from now it’s a music blog. PR3 if I am not mistaken, with some good reviews, news and other materials music related.

Today the project started. I’ll install some hacks on it and tweak the skin some more, even if it’s very close to the final look. Let’s hope in its success

I have to say I LOVE ANNIVERSARIES!

Yesterday one of my projects, Morrowind.ro celebrated 1 year of existence. It was a small “celebration”. We had a nice topic in the forums where my members were able to express their feelings. And the good thing is that most of them were at least as happy as I was to have been in the community for so long.

Morrowind is maybe the best game for me. What does make it so special?

Read the rest of this entry »

Some months ago I started a thread on the forums: Your greatest mistake as an admin?

And even if our members there detailed this issue a lot, I think we can also occupy a post in our blog too. We make many mistakes over the time (from bad promotion, problems with the layouts or redirects to other ones). Some are big, some are smaller. I will personally try to tell you here which of my mistakes I think it’s the biggest and will invite you to comment and tell us in here what’s your biggest mistake as a site admin.

What’s my BIGGEST mistake as a forum/site admin? Read the rest of this entry »

I recall being very angry on Wikipedia for instance for putting rel nofollow to the links people posted after submitting content to the mammoth project. I consider this to be a nasty trick to not let others also benefit from their hard work in the end. Placing a thoughtful comment or a good article is a promotion tactic indeed, but on the other hand people who submit they work in my sites also help me with the content.

This is something I really like. An entire movement towards regaining some of the good things the Internet used to have: cooperation, people who helped each others and didn’t just run for high PR forgetting to reward their content writers.

I was shocked tonight to realize my blog was with a nofollow tag attached by default. Wordpress seems to come with this bad setting and there’s no setting in it to remove the tag. Fortunately I was able to find a hack that would do this for me. From now on this blog is, as it should be, SEO friendly for you too, dear visitors.

Your opinions MATTER. Share your ideas and thoughts and “i follow” … As for the spam … I have akismet

I got my article writing groove back it seems. I didn’t create an article for some time and I just kept on thinking it’s hard and tedious to do this. Having too much work on the sites seems to make me not enjoy my administration job anymore in some days.

Still the idea came and the words wrote almost by themselves. As you know, I don’t re-publish articles from the web, I usually get my own ideas and put them down. Another unique article for you to enjoy:

3 wrong reasons to start a forum

Here are the reasons in a short list:

1. I chose a niche that has a high Adsense payment

2. Derived from the first reason: I chose to start a forum to get rich.

3. I chose to open a site as a revenge against another admin.

They all appear in the article with my comments. Enjoy

I had some issues with Talking about Movies, my movie discussion forums. I was .. let’s say .. lazy … for some time and got the forums into quite a spammers heaven. Till I just said to myself .. we need to do something about this. And that I did.

As I already mentioned on this topic Prevent SPAM on phpBB … excellent topic in the main forums here .. there are some mods to be installed to keep the bots and human spammers away. I installed some, cleaned the member base and censored some words, plus banned some email extensions: .biz, .info, .org, .ws and some others. I know it’s a bit too “tough” on some legit members, but most of my normal members use gmail or a .com email address. And most my spammers used the extensions I banned, so in the end it’s not that bad.

I am working now on the header links (as you can see now, as I write this) there are some weird looking buttons, but they are in work and will change. I am pretty pleased with the way the forums look now and I will keep on adding new topics on a daily basis. And I also started posting some more into some related forums to get some more traffic.

Few days ago I bragged about how many things I’ll do and how organized I’ll be. The good thing is that list of “to do” stuff is really useful since I can see where I need to work more and I can write down what I need to change and my ideas. When you’re having as many sites as I do, you tend to forget a lot of things.

Bad thing is that I didn’t follow that list as I wanted to. It looks like it’s a bit too “hard” for me to do this while also going to my regular job and sleeping. But weekends are the time I can catch up with a lot of “not done yet’ things.

My latest distraction from the work itself are the 2 blogs I created on blogspot. I have one, a personal blog if you want to call it, named My (daily?) rants and one for the game I play online, Travian, called Travian Tips & Tricks.

For the last 2 days I neglected anything just to write in them. It’s quite nice doing this, but I think I need to take back that list and do the things I have too, while also keeping my readers happy with the blogs

Well, we made it to 2007. Time to recover from the parties (those who attended them) and start planning for the future. I had a good 2006, I have to admit it and I hope 2007 will be as good as the previous year, if not better

Yesterday the new webmasters project was “officially launched”. Invatam Net brings a lot of the Wtricks.com information and resources to the Romanian web developers who might find it hard to read all these articles in English. The site is running flawlessly so far and we started translating some of the articles posted in here. I had 2 members help with the translations already, so maybe in few weeks we can have them all.

Yesterday and the day before yesterday I celebrated the New Year by working. I lost the domain linksforwebdesign.com few days ago and re-newed it. But I lost the site (well I have it on the computer, but wanted to work more on the layout). So I recreated the layout and placed a new script on it. Works OK now. I have to index a lot of links into it and also promote it.

Plans for 2007?

Maybe if I could be more organized. I want to have a “schedule” for web design work, and try to fit it in my normal job schedule. My plans would be something like this:

1. 5 new posts/day on each forum (I have 10, so it’s gonna take some time)

2. 20 links/day on Martial Art Links and Links for Web Design

3. 5 sub-quests/day written for Morrowind.ro

4. 1 article translated every 2 days from Wtricks to Invatam Net

5. 1 article/week posted on wtricks (then translated)

6. 1 article/month posted on Dojo

7. All the administrative chores: upgrades, theme redesigns, programs done when I can (that’s gonna be tough)

If I was able to keep on this schedule I think I might have better results than before… but it takes a lot of work and in the end … it’s not my full time job. I’ll keep you posted

Well, it’s Christmas time once again. I wish you all a very Happy day with the ones you love and may all your 2007 wishes come true …

It’s Christmas once again .. and I’m working. I wouldn’t consider designing as work, but I think many would think that I should do something else on Christmas Eve and Christmas day than tweaking layouts and scripts. I love this, so I think it was another well spent holiday.

For some weeks I had in mind a huge re-design for my first site, Dojo.ro. This was my first site and I started loving design after working on it. It’s been 5 years already … Well, as time goes by, so my expectations get higher. Dojo didn’t have the looks I wanted for a site anymore and it was the time for another “face”.

I started working on the layout few days ago. As opposed to my “normal” routine, this time I kinda took my time. Didn’t rush into design, just worked on the colours, images … After 2-3 days the mock-up design was ready and I started the design. Dojo is on Etomite (the main site), so I created a new template based on my design.

But I wanted to have a directory too. So I downloaded phplinkdirectory once again and worked on the template to make it look as the main site. The forums are on IPB, so .. you guessed: re-creating a template, working on the colours, the buttons and images.
Yesterday I was lazy … had to make the new buttons .. but I was just sick of design. I spent 10-13 hours on the site and in the evening I just didn’t want to work anymore. So I waited till today to “release” the new layout and make the final changes.

As you can guess I am also tired now. I think I’ll watch some “The 3rd Rock from the Sun” episodes and just relax. Enough with work .. it’s Christmas in the end

Since so many people already make fun of me that I have no life, I think it was the time to prove them right once again. I have initiated a new project in the Dojo Design network and this is for the Romanian web designers. I don’t know if I have a niche on this, never cared about them to be honest. But still I didn’t find a good Romanian web development community and some of them (those who are online) are filled with people who like to mock at newcomers or make some disrespectful comments when a site is not quite top notch and the owner asked for a review.

In the end Invatam Net is meant to be a Romanian mirror of Wtricks. We’ll have most of my articles here translated for our members there, the post exchange project, the market place and most of the things that made Wtricks special all this time. I really like how our members here treat the newcomers in the forums and how they offer feed-back. I wish I’ll be able to have the same friendly community on Invatam Net.

I have used MyBB this time in order to get used to this script too. Outside the box it’s a good script. I see two main downsides to it:

1. the template system (I am used to the .tpl files on phpBB and the div only layout kinda gave me some work to do). I solved this by creating a new “wrap” layout and put the forums into it.

2. lack of mods and themes. Well, never cared that much for themes since I make my own, but the features are needed and some don’t have a modification made yet. It’s normal for a new script though, I just hope they’ll keep on creating them and adding them.

Invatam Net is on a “pre-launch” period right now. I wanted to have 1 month to play with the script and initiate some topics before the “launch”. We’ll have it “open” from January 1, even if the forums can already be used and joined.

Google seems to have started getting us the initial traffic and this is a good thing. It looks like the famous search engine found us in only days since the forum start, I hope this will get better in the next months.

Few days to the lauch … Let’s hope it will be a good project in the end

I am already known to be quite a lazy person when it comes to upgrade my scripts. Due to some serious spam issues and after I realized that the 2.0.21 phpBB version is less likely to receive it, I made it a priority for today to upgrade one of my phpBB forums: Talking About Movies.

As usually my forum is heavily modded so no chance for me to do the upgrade in the “normal” way. This meant code changes. They took 30 minutes I think but I had no issues at all. The code changes from 2.0.19 to 2.0.20 … some easy to follow code changes (as all the very well explained phpBB mods, this one was easy to follow and implement).

After making the code changes (and also having the old files backed up… because you never know) I was able to download phpBB 2.0.20, create a install folder in the forums’ root and copy the update_to_latest.php file that would upgrade my SQL tables too. Of course: BACK UP the database prior to any changes.

All went well. Tomorrow I should upgrade to the latest and install some nice “anti-spam” hacks I found on phpBB’s Official Site.

This can be placed on the “how stupid can I be” series …

I have read on Invisionize some info about a list of addresses and IPs to be banned. I had some email addresses banned, but I thought I might place some more already known spammer addresses and clean my forums better. This measure would affect Martial Art Forums and Dojo - The Romanian MA Forum.

I was very pleased to paste a HUGE list of IPs and email addresses. I then closed the browser and went to another site in my network.

Big mistake. I didn’t check the results ASAP and noticed only after few hours that I have banned my IP. Judging from some emails I got it looks like I banned more members (not all though).

I was able to restore the previous IP list (no IPs) and everything was OK. I posted a “mea culpa” message in both forums and realized that no matter how experienced I think I am I still can make some VERY stupid things.

My conclusion:

1. try not to be so fast with IP bans

2. check the forums as soon as you made such a change. Saves you from some more embaressment.

I wasn’t bored, but I don’t think I could have found a better way to spend my time anyway

Few days ago I chatted with a fellow forum admin about the possibility to merge our two forums. www.WomenOnlyForums.com would get some new members and content and we’d grow together from now on.

Everything seemed to be OK. I told her I would start tweaking something, look for topics that already mention this and in few days we might make the switch. She was fast enough to give me a first dabatase dump for me to work on.

I have to thank Lord for the brains he gave me (this time at least) and the inspired thought of setting a test forum. I was almost on the verge of working on the main forums and then realized it’s too serious to toy around with.

So my first night meant creating the 2 databases and importing the data. Creating the test forum was a good idea in the end … I was able to see that the main database backup was working and I could also see the results when trying the merge.

The second day meant looking for the merge script and tweaking it. And the first set of some ugly errors. I read the info I could many times and tried to adjust. At the end of the second working day I had the feeling that maybe .. I won’t make it. I also knew then that we have 2 different databases (mine heavily modded with so many supplementary tables and columns) and the other one with its share of modifications too. While I tried to sleep I made is as a plan to compare the 2 databases and try to make them more compatible.

The next 2 days meant more work into solving the errors. I had them all. And looked for some explanations and ways out while also learning some more about phpmyadmin and database structure. It was even more clear to me: I won’t make it. I have re-imported the databases so many times I was just sick of it. I wanted to quit tens of times, but I knew that I would make a fool of myself in front of my fellow admin who was willing to trust her forums and members to me.

It was Saturday in the morning. I woke up determined to finish it that day (I promised to do so days ago and few hours ago I asked the other admin to close the board entirely since I won’t need a second database dump. I just wasn’t able to go through it all again with a new database that needed re-importing of the columns that weren’t there in the first place. Her forum was closed for more than 1 day already and I was ashamed to tell her “Well, I wasn’t able to make it, do whatever you like with it.”

I went shopping (looks like it’s a good way for a woman to ease her mind ) and came home some hours after this. I opened phpmyadmin again and let the script make the merges and give errors until I spotted ALL the missing columns. I wrote all the code to insert them, emptied the databases again and did it all over again. I would go farther each time and have other new errors. After another set of errors I was able FOR THE FIRST TIME to have a flawless merge.

It was about the time I would close my main forum, announce my members of the downtime we’ll experience and then work on the merge on the official forum. I sent a mass email telling my girls we’ll have a surprise prepared and the forums would be down for few hours. I then backed up the main database once again, changed the info on the merge script and re-imported the data on the second database (teh one to be placed in my forums).

And … Error. Forgot to add a column and I had an error again. After I calmed myself down I re-dropped all the tables in both databases, re-imported them, imported the list of changes in the SQL option and hit the merge script again. IT WORKED. I screamed for joy and went to see my big forum. Took me some hours to make it all OK, move topics, re-open the forums, welcome the new people … but the main thing was that I did it. I merged two forums and proved to myself once again that I CAN DO IT.

And since this is the “romance” style story, here is the tutorial I made about this.

Told you so .. I never update the blog when I should. It’s been 20 days and nothing … shame on me …

So that you don’t think I was asleep all this time: I made another theme for phpBB, USB theme used in a live environment here. The admin made some small tweaks (placed a welcome message and changed the ad banner) .. I am pleased to see it used, and I have to confess, with all my non-existent modesty, that it does look superbe

I also worked a lot on a new forum of mine, Morrowind.ro

It needed a new theme since the old one was plain horrid. When I started the project I was alone in the forums and since I do have many others to think about I just let it as it was. But it did got a facelift so that it does look as I think such a forum should look. We have a very good Google placement (I think the Able-to-Know mod for phpBB is indeed very good) and I see an increase in traffic and posting.

The problem is that Morrowind has a lot of quests and we also talk about the new game, Oblivion, so that means less time for me on Wtricks, more time on creating content for the new baby …

I have made it as a good habit to create something at least once a week. It seems like I was able to make new things for the downloads section 2-3 times a week, but as time passes I need to work on other things too, not just the downloads.

2 days ago I posted at TAZ an announcement that I am willing to create some graphics and even theme for the people who need them. I already got some requests and the new phpBB theme I created was made for this. It’s a forum about TV shows, so I thought a skin with an old TV on it would be pretty fancy.

I also made the main table sit in a TV like border .. some would find this nice. I hope

I also created new buttons and everything is at display on our phpBB test link. The bad thing is that in order to preview the themes one must be logged in. I have created an account and it’s easy to use: username test, password test. Otherwise the skin change won’t work. Don’t ask me why, I wasn’t able to make it work. Yesterday I spent 5 hours installing some hacks to do this but none works. I was very ..ssed as you can imagine.

This is how the forums would look.

For the people who want the skin: here is the download page.

I was also a good girl and packed the button sets from this theme and the games theme. I thought some people might want them separate too:

And the game theme buttons; not too pretty in my opinion, but still good to use