Posted by
Port-Na-Storm on
URL: http://uk-hbbr-forum.61.s1.nabble.com/Google-Rankings-tp4025538p4025566.html
OK Here we go.
Firstly, true confession time. I've got a log-in to the wordpress site and I haven't been updating it either.
So its not a lack of access or ability stopping it being updated, just a lack of will. Its good to hear David volunteer to help. Well done that man!
A quick history lesson for those who weren't around;
UK-HBBR was originally set up on the old Yahoo Forum, we moved away from that because people were fed up of all the adverts in their e-mails, and you couldn't do things like post photographs in messages, only into separate albums. The ownership of that group was passed over to me by Alex Jordan and I still have the power of life and death over it. I intend to leave it dormant but still in existence, to maintain the archive of Photos and some of great discussion. I recently had cause to go back and trawl through some of it as you'll see in a future edition of WaterCraft and it was very enjoyable.
At some later point the wordpress site was created, I think by Chris Perkins with some help from Paul, Chris Partridge and myself. Yes this was supposed to be the shop window with rally reports, and all manner of interesting articles..........................pause while a ball of prairie grass rolls across the screen.
When we decided to leave Yahoo and head for Nabble, it was suggested that an integrated site which included an embedded forum would be just the ticket. Paul and Greg did a fair amount of developing and proto-typing, but unfortunately the software at the time restricted the size of the window available to the forum and it was all scrunched up in the middle of the screen.
Then someone, less interested in the technology and more pragmatic in nature suggested that a simple link to the forum was pretty much the same as being embedded, so we linked the wordpress site to the new Nabble forum and that is where we should be today.
In fact I've just checked; I've just googled UK-HBBR and the top return takes me to the wordpress site. If you click on the FORUM tab on it takes you to our current Nabble Forum.
So where does that take us? Precisely right back where we started.
I agree with David that the technology is irrelevant, provided it works.
I think we have proven that it is unlikely a shop window web site will get much in the way of updates. With the best will in the world the editor can't be everywhere and if they don't get supplied with good content then the site won't be updated.
If we want to attract others to our group, and by that I really mean Real People who really want to turn up at our Rallies in the Real World. Then I think Greg is right that a stripped down shell, with all the right key words and phrases to attract search engines might be the way forward. It doesn't matter which technology is used but I would make one heart felt plea.
Do not Bugger-Around with this Forum. We lost some good old friends in the crossing between Yahoo and here and I don't want to lose any more.
PS the general radio silence right now is probably due to the number of more active members getting ready to go to Cobnor which is exactly what I should be doing.
Cheers
Graham