You have a narrow thinking like those moderators do. It's not just me that has a website, 100s of other people have websites that could contribute a lot to these forums. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one whose link got removed as someone mentioned earlier that they also had problems with signature links on pet forums and don't even bother visiting them anymore.
I completely feel you man. But it's not worth an heart attack so get on with it. After all, we can't do anything about it anyway.
I think whether it's allowed or not allowed,it should be written clearly in the terms of service.They can't do it randomly.So you can give up that forum since you're so disappointed.
In my niche it is quite difficult to find a forum that will allow posting URLs on signatures--or anywhere for that matter--as they want to force others to pay advertisement fees. I understand that this is largely due to obnoxious people signing on just to post a link, but I am not so sure is such a strict rule is actually effective for smaller forums to gain advertising income.... While I am trying to figure out a fair rule for sigs on my own forum, I think I´ll allow signatures after x posts. It is certainly something that a forum owner cannot decide on without serious thought.
Some of these moderators are not very tech savvy. They're usually members that spend the most time on the forum and have the most posts. They've been told that whenever they see a link, it must be spam. They also think that having these links will make their forum's search engine ranking lower which is not true. Also, some of them want to force people to advertise with them. However, I look at it this way. If I'm going to contribute my time and knowledge to your forum, the least I can get back is a link to my website. Some people are overprotective and this just makes them lose members which could be beneficial to them in the future.
Sorry but you sound like a damn crybaby. Their site = their rules. If you have a problem with how a site is run, you need to be communicating to them about it. Not running off to other sites and moaning and whining about it. Using your logic, I can come into your house, take a magic marker and start writing on the walls. Just because you didn't see a rule about sigs doesn't mean they don't have one. Just like this site has a rule against complaining about other sites: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.php?faq=rules#faq_posting_guidelines You probably missed it. Just like you missed that one. If you don't like a site, just move on.
I will move on. I don't care if they let me post a link or not anymore but I wanted to let people know that there are many forums that will not allow you to post your link like I found out even though many people here recommend to join forums and add links to the signature. That can be done on a few forums like DP, but most of them do not allow this.
One mans quality link is another mans spam. Likewise, one admin's version of quality content can be vastly different then another's. Possibly you found one moderator/admin/site that thought your posts, while maybe offering some quality content, was not good enough? However, I know and understand the game...if to me it seems you are only posting on my forum to get your link out, there is a GOOD possibility you'll find none of your links work. It's not about "content" on my forum, it's about community! If you are there to trade links for content there is a possibility I'll simply nix your efforts. Best of luck on your next forum. Here are some tips I wrote on the matter a while back... Forum Link Building tips (it's not just your signiture!)
Forums without content are useless. What is this community of yours going to look at and what will make them keep coming back? Content of course and people contributing information. I do not come here to chit-chat, but to get or provide information. I've seen forums with over 5,000 members and they only have 10 active members that post all the time about how they like the party they've been to or how their boyfriend broke up with them. Those other 4990 members do not bother coming back because the information that is being posted is useless to them personally, but it might be useful to those 10 people that make up the community. Again, forums are missing on opportunities because they're blocking webmasters from including their links. If someone just comes and posts once and never comes back again, then of course you should remove their link since they're not going to help your forum anymore. But if they come every day and reply to posts with interesting and useful information, there is no need to remove their links.
Think how much better the DP would be without the spammers? COMMUNITY! Good, and keep doing that... but when you get outside into forums not based on webmasters circles you'll find a vastly different mindset in the community administration. Most of them have no clue what SERP is, what PR means, or how many backlinks they have... you'll also find that many of them do not care! In a lot of cases you'll even find that it does not matter! They are doing rather well for themselves... and it may even surprise you that it's NOT about the money... it's about the COMMUNITY! I'm willing to bet most of those site's 4990 non-posting members have a chongsoft email address and have one post each. In many cases you are more then correct... trading content for sig links IS good for a forum, but on a good forum, it's simply not needed. And note, I am not fully disagreeing with you... I use my sig links on every forum I am a member of. I too trade my content for sig links... but when it comes to my forum, I pick and choose who I allow to do it, and if I feel it's a 'webmaster' or something pushing a site, I'll disallow it. *shrug* It's my hypocrisy and I'm sticking too it
Well, at least that was honest In my case, and as I just got started on my forum about a month ago, I see that in most instances I do not get even get the chance to offer content while adding my link. The forums I'd like to tap on have very stern rules not allowing the placement of links. So, even if I wanted to share some content and add to the community while satisfying my perverse ulterior motives, I can't!
Honesty is the best policy! *smirk* I do agree that toooooo many forums are not allowing any type of linkage at all... I honestly blame those Nokia spam bots and not people like Lotos1 (and myself) that are pushing sig links through valid quality content.
From my experiences - many financial forums, especially the bigger ones, are not allowing signatures at all, for fear of people spamming for sites with dubious stock tips and such, it's mainly the liability issue.
Hi there, I am one of the “evil forummasters†with no links whatsoever. I can tell about my particular case: I do run a forum on pharma eMarketing (not infamous Pfizer product but concepts for corporate webmaster and users). People of the forum were all seasoned pharma pros, forum had a rank and name. Could you imagine how many stupid “online pharmacies†were haunting the place??? Any messages like “look, for your infamous blue pill - companies here deal in tons not in milligrams†were just falling into nowhere. Then we simply removed all the links both from the messages and sigs. Moderators of the forum were also with daytime jobs, so pressing delete and banning all day was not an option. Links – out, word replacement – in. Any banned word now comes like “I am a spammer!â€. That was the only way to try and revive the forum.