Hello i have an idea of starting a forum community, i have worked with different forum softwares for a long time. But i didn't really get into the website stuff and ranking shit. So i have few questions that need answering. Domain: Can i choose .net domain even though i'm in uk, will it change smth? How does ranking work? What i need to do to protect my forum and hosting? thanks
Here are some of the basics: If you are planning to target your local community (geographically) then it makes sense to get a UK TLD. Google actually does take this in consideration when providing results based on geo-location. If your forum caters to people from all over the world then a .net .com .org TLD will be fine. This is a topic too complex to tackle in one post. I suggest you start reading here http://www.searchengineguide.com/jim-hedger/seo-101-basic.php To protect your forum you first need to set the right file permissions when installing the script (post installation too) .. You should appoint moderators to prevent the forum from getting blasted with spam and you should also set an .htaccess script on your server to prevent massive hotlinking (should you have images in your forum)