Posted: 04 Jul 2007 at 1:56pm
Hi all, again
Just a quick note. The ads you see on this forum are not mine. They are Google ads that come with the Forum software package they provide for free to amateurs like me. I can't figure out how to get rid of them - probably impossible. Its one example of how Google has figured out how to make so much money. When I get annoyed enough (or maybe when this website hits 100K viewers a day?) we'll dump them, get our own ads and start to defray the costs of this website! In the meantime please grin and bear it - or tell me, if you know, how to get rid of them.

Your webmaster

ps - sometimes I get on the forum and see there is a visiting guest identified only as a computer in the Google network monitoring the site. Often, it's visiting for 20 minutes or more. I'll bet its name is 'Big Brother' or something similar. Very eerie.


Posted: 06 Jul 2007 at 8:58am
As you know, I maintain a forum using the PHPBB system. So far, it is pretty good, but steps need to be taken to prevent robot spam. They have a new version that looks quite nice. If you are considering upgrading take a look at phpbb.com I believe they have some translators to import the database of other types of forums.

ps.
I too have observed google's computer's 'parking' on my forum. you may notice visits from yahoo and other search engines too. these are the search engine spiders indexing the content. seeing them is kind of a good thing, it means that when people search for the things we talk about in the forums and attached websites, dolphin24.org pages show up in the results. there are techniques developers use to make pages get better rankings, but I wont get into it now
hull 183


Posted: 06 Jul 2007 at 9:57am
Hi Aaron
Thanks for the tips. I was thinking that when Google starts advertising Rolexes and Jaguars up there then that might be the signal to do our own thing with ads. For now, we'll just have to grin and bear it.
Ron