Heya guys and girls, In order to inspire more people to register on my forum, rather than just browse I am thinking about closing off one of the boards to the general public. Hopefully this will encourage more people to sign up. I do not want to start an "underground" board, as people may not be bothered to sign up to see that. I want it to be a board that they genuinely want to see. Implications: Will google stop indexing hidden boards? Which board do you think I should close: http://www.theafricangreyparrot.com/African-Grey-Parrot-Community-forum.html Thanks for your wisdom! Notting
Google will not index closed board because they hit your board just like a guest would and they would not be able to see the closed boards. As for what section to close, the buy sell trade section I would definatley leave open. I do not see what closing any of your sections would accomplish. I can tell you though that some people might now want to be bothered by the iframe you have on your site with the forum included.
Thanks for your input. I've decided to close all forums to the public. I'll do it for a week which will give me a reasonable amount of data to see what happens. Hopefully more people will register and the community will grow. I don't think that google indexes the forum properly due to the iframe anyway. The iframe is something that I should sort out really, but I don't know how to customise the the template to make it fit with the rest of the site. I may have to pay someone to do this at some point in the future, but at the moment I don't think that it is a massive problem. Notting
i would at least offer one open board to explain to guests what your trying to accomplish, give em a teaser or something. i saw your forums here though. http://theafricangreyparrot.com/forum/index.php
Would definatly fix that iframe as fast a possible. It's really not that hard to do.... Would also try to match the forum theme with the main site.