TechTalk Styles

BTW, root, thank you very much for your great comments about TechTalk! :D

Sorry root and the few others out there who prefer the 3D version. I noticed a whole bunch of problems with the backend of the site as well as the phpBB templates, which basically left me no option than to start from scratch with both!

Right now in use is a slightly modified version of the default subSilver phpBB theme. Hopefully I'll have time soon to get it looking just like it used to with a flat as well as a 3D theme.

I prefer the 3d style, by far. Nice idea though, being able to select the style.

The whole site is well presented, and you're to be congratulated on your good work. I can't understand why you don't get more activity in your forums as I would have expected many people to find the site potentially useful. What's your search engine coverage like? Could you expand your keywords at all? Add ones such as Novell, C++, Visual Basic? Must be plenty more.

Perhaps some people are put off by the low level of traffic on the forums - you need to reach a critical mass and then it should start to really take off.

But congratulations on the good work - the foundations have been laid, just need to get more people participating.

Thank you ... yes, I've worked very, very hard here and really appreciate you noticing. The site has been around for about a year.

I think the main problem is that there are just so many other really good computer-related forums that there is such heavy competition out there.

As for our traffic ... we do get a very decent amount. (Search engines bring us an average of a little over 100 unique visitors per day) The problem is that very few people actually register or contribute compared to the amount of traffic we get. Most of our visitors come in via the search engines directly to certain threads, where they get the info they want, and leave (never even seeing our login/register page).

I've ran out of ideas to hook people. I was thinking of putting the register/login form directly on all of our pages (so everyone would see it) but that just seems like it would clutter everything up so much.

Another major problem right now is the host. The site goes down A LOT (and I mean A LOT). So that's an enormous turn-off I'm sure. I'm working on resolving this right now. (On hold with tech support as I write this actually.) Hopefully this problem will be fixed VERY SHORTLY!

Personally I like the 3d style better too. But most people don't which is why I made the flat version the default.

I think you should be able to improve significantly on 100 unique hits per day, as good as that sounds, and would still advise you to add more keywords. Take a look at the site and consider what it's about, jot down the words that matter, then check out your keywords and see what you might consider is missing.

For example, you have forums for C++, Java and Visual Basic, but they don't appear in the list of keywords. Same with Mac and Novell. Sure, these keywords will get millions of matches so trying to get to the top of the pile will be difficult, but match them with other keywords, such as forum, tutorial, beginners, etc and who knows.

Couldn't find a link to your site at CodeMonkeyX - you link to theirs.

Yeah, I'm going to go right now to see if I can improve on my keywords. (Hopefully I'll get somewhere!)

We get about 300 unique hits per day, about 100 of those come out of search engines. We also get hits from our "affiliate" sites that we exchange links with. But I'm still sure that a majority of the remaining 2/3 are from people like me, you, tekmaven, inscissor, and aeinstein who visit the boards often.

Well, off I go to see if I could improve my keywords and description tags! Wish me luck!

As for CodeMonkeyX, he wrote the php script that I use to display the latest news on the TechTalk homepage. I was one of his first beta testers and he was very helpful in helping me get started.

As you may already know, the forum software this site is based off of is called phpBB. CodeMonkeyX posted a thread on phpBB regarding his news hack which became very popular. On the first post of his thread, he put a link to TechTalk as the example site for anyone to see what the news hack looks like before they download it. I received a lot of visitors that way which is why I wanted to return the favor and link back to his site.

EDIT: BTW thank you for pointing that out! (that he's not linking back to me) I could use people like you to make sure my affiliates aren't deleting my link (haha just kidding)

How about this?

<meta name="keywords" content="computer forum, computer tech support, windows 2000 XP help, web development database, computer science theory, comp sci theory, apple mac OS X, novell forum, network internet, programming code, c++ java code snippets, visual basic ASP help, free computer support help, web development databases, programming tutorial reference, unix redhat mandrake linux, windows operating system, gaming hardware, computer software">

<meta name="description" content="Get free tech support, computer tips, and tutorials with our pc forums. Listing of computer resources and links. Software help for operating systems such as Windows, Mac, and Novell. Hardware and networking news. C++, Java, Visual Basic, and web development programming references and tutorials. Download code snippets for you to use in your programs.">

Is this a lil better? What can I do to improve on it? I remember reading that it's a bad idea if you use a particular word or phrase more than once in your keywords. So I didn't want to keep saying C++ programming, Java programming, VB programming, web dev programming, etc. (The same goes for "forums" and "tutorials")

Yeah, does look better. I think some search engines get funny about descriptions that are much longer than about 25 words, or used to. Keywords - you can have loads.

I guess it will take a little while before you can see whether the additional keywords are having an effect, but they can't do any harm.

Fingers crossed!

Nice idea though, being able to select the style.

Addendum: It's a simple idea really. All that happens are the .css file is swapped out depending on which version you pick. All of the code, itself, stays the same.

I've played around with creating web sites a little but nothing fancy. Not touched CSS yet but it looks as though I need to. I was talking to a colleague at work this week and he was talking about pretty much the same thing you use for swapping styles, only I hadn't appreciated that's how you do it on TTF. I can see me reading up on CSS for the next couple of weeks ;-)

Style sheets are very simple to implement and it can really make your life a whole lot easier when you're trying to make an entire site have a consistant look and feel. There's also some stuff you can only do w/ css such as not making links be underlined that you can't do with html.

Plus there are a lot of resources on the web with a listing of available properties you have a choice of. You may wish to take a look at style sheets if you've never played around w/ them before, just for curiosity's sake. They're a pretty simple concept though (especially if you're proficient in HTML).

BTW were you able to find this thread OK? I'm sure you noticed I created a new forum for TechTalk related stuff. I figured I'd weed out the Random Stuff forum.

My HTML skills are OK. I've knocked up a few sites, ordinary stuff though. I can do something more complex than I have but don't have the need. I have a book on DHTML/CSS but haven't spent any time on it yet, too much other stuff to do, but I like what I'm hearing about CSS and will spend some time on it in the next few weeks. I can see a lot of potential for using it.

Cheers.

i just tried the "flat" style - think i might just leave it in place for awhile! :)

Hey Mister Scarce! Welcome back ;) hehe

bob:

I'm getting a "runtime error" popup everytime I try to visit your site? ;)

Yeah, thanks for that. I use a counter on the site from Bravenet.com and it apears they were having problems earlier, which is where the error came from.

Thanks for letting me know. Seems to be working OK now.

Other than the counter there's nothing but very basic HTML on the site.

I hear you. I also use a counter from Bravenet.

Other than that, I've found the facilities Bravenet offer to be quite good. On another site I use their guestbook, chat room etc and have been quite pleased with it all. Very easy to install and set up and very few problems.

I definitely agree with you. I like their stat tools. I also don't mind too much the periodic e-mails I get from them regarding web site tricks.

I still remember back to the days when Bravenet first started. "Dave And Brad's Web Site Tools"

Now I'm thinking about what a horrible site layout they had. They had like 2 or 3 cgi scripts and I think the site was in frames, too!

Then they changed their name to Bravenet and had clipart of this knight on a horse on every page. The rest is www history.

Another reason why waybackmachine is so useful. Though I don't see a page that dates back as far as you say. I found out about them in 1998 I think. I think I did my first web page in 1998, or 1997... what a thrill. I wish I still had it... ;)

just checked it out - must say i half expected to see blue & white painted Celt animate across the page... looks very interesting from a casual glance...

Thank you ... yes, I've worked very, very hard here and really appreciate you noticing. The site has been around for about a year.

I think the main problem is that there are just so many other really good computer-related forums that there is such heavy competition out there.

As for our traffic ... we do get a very decent amount. (Search engines bring us an average of a little over 100 unique visitors per day) The problem is that very few people actually register or contribute compared to the amount of traffic we get. Most of our visitors come in via the search engines directly to certain threads, where they get the info they want, and leave (never even seeing our login/register page).

I've ran out of ideas to hook people. I was thinking of putting the register/login form directly on all of our pages (so everyone would see it) but that just seems like it would clutter everything up so much.

Another major problem right now is the host. The site goes down A LOT (and I mean A LOT). So that's an enormous turn-off I'm sure. I'm working on resolving this right now. (On hold with tech support as I write this actually.) Hopefully this problem will be fixed VERY SHORTLY!

Personally I like the 3d style better too. But most people don't which is why I made the flat version the default.

I am very glad I found this website, I've been looking for a computer related website, and well this has hit the nail on the coffen for me.. All the topics here are very helpful.. Even the walk throughs. I'm sure their are alot of great web forums, but I'm going to stick to this website for awhile.. And as for the topic I prefer the "3d"..