Purpose of this thread:

• Members to give suggestions or opinions for changes to the forum features or appearance.
  
• Administrators to give updates as to what changes have recently occured.

Suggestions and opinions will be deleted about a week after the changes have been made in order to keep the thread as a quick How to do... guide for members.



Administrators
Curva Fiesole
Dave
Mezz
Myles

Moderators
Jay
Jimmilson
Verno


Mods can;
Edit other members posts
Delete other member posts

Admins can;
Edit other members posts
Delete other member posts
Ban/suspend other members
Alter the setup of the forum (ie. number of minutes users are allowed to edit their posts, word sensors, alter users' permissions)

Last edited by Myles on 15-04-09 20:58; edited 10 times in total

Rankings for number of posts:

New member 1
Occasional Poster 10
Fairly Regular Poster 20
Regular Poster 30

Last edited by Myles on 04-10-08 15:32; edited 2 times in total

Forum is now ad-free of those google ads.

If anyone can still see the ads, clear the cookies relating to this forum, if you still see them let me know.

Last edited by Myles on 31-07-08 20:59; edited 4 times in total

Credit and thanks to forum member nino (Doo Wop) for creating the new banner at the top.

Last edited by Myles on 31-07-08 20:59; edited 1 time in total

Date/time Display

If you want the date and time to appear the same as the C4 forum, I recommend to set the date and time in your profile by copying and pasting the following:

d-m-y  H:i

Last edited by Myles on 28-09-08 17:42; edited 1 time in total

Avators

These need to be kept at a maximum width of 180pixels, maximum height of 300pixels, to keep the appearance of the forum consistant, hence; prevent making everyone's message compressed.

Last edited by Myles on 28-09-08 17:41; edited 1 time in total

Changing Usernames

If anyone wants to change their username (i.e. would like to change a letter to caps, or just wants a totally different username) can do so by sending a private message to any of the Administators.

Last edited by Myles on 06-11-09 23:27; edited 2 times in total

Video Clips

You can now embed your football videos into your posts using the following code:

Code:

[size=24]TITLE[/size] [video]URL LINK[/video]

You can set the size as you wish (i.e. it doesn't have to be 24, that's just for the example)

Example:

The following title and url link...

Code:

[size=24]Flight of the Conchords - Business Time[/size] [video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU[/video]

...will look like...

Flight of the Conchords - Business Time

Link

Add to Favourites

This button has replaced the link to footballitaliano.tv , however this button will only work with Internet Explorer as no code exists to make it work with FireFox.


Video BBcode

This button has been added in the Post a Reply page, like so...




Last Visited

A new column has been added in the Memberlist page which displays the date of when each member last logged into the forum...this can be removed if there's a desire for it!

Adding Your Club Name Above Your Avatar


You can have your clubs show above your avatar like any of the three examples below;


One club will show like...






Two clubs (country) will show like...






Multiple clubs will show like...






Other members will see your club in your profile like...









How to add your clubs...



Click on the Profile link at the top of the page, shown below...






Scroll down your Profile page until you see the My Clubs: field and enter your clubs...






Then scroll dow to the bottom of the page and click the Submit button.

Adverts in Signatures
 
Members can advertise their business in their signature, subject to the following conditions:

1. Submit* link and nature of business for approval.
   
2. Must be reputable business (i.e. not illegal or which might bring forum into disrepute).
   
3. Members can only advertise their own personal website/business.
   
4. Banner ads are not permitted.

 
*Submit by Private Message to an administrator.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Added to the Forum Terms and Conditions

Last edited by Myles on 06-11-09 23:28; edited 1 time in total

Privacy

From day 1 of the forum, back in August/September 2007, search engines have been dissallowed from crawling the following pages below, so personal data i.e. email addresses , are not obtained by google or spamming crawlers, so you have never received spam because of being a member of this forum.

Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /db/
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /language/
Disallow: /templates/
Disallow: /common.php
Disallow: /config.php
Disallow: /faq.php
Disallow: /groupcp.php
Disallow: /login.php
Disallow: /memberlist.php
Disallow: /modcp.php
Disallow: /posting.php
Disallow: /privmsg.php
Disallow: /profile.php
Disallow: /search.php
Disallow: /viewonline.php

Micky wrote:

My understanding of it is that it isn't what you say, but rather how much you pay for the word in question. Maybe we could have a whip round? Or some select and unintrusive advertising?

The search engines work on algorithims (equations), so it's a case of manipulating the variables in the algorithims. Google slightly changes the weight of the variables in their algorithim every 90 days so people can't figure it out, however, they basically stay the same.

These 3 are the most important:
url – this is the most important, For instance this page http://footballitalia.myfastforum.org/about214.html , i also have http://footballitalia.myfastforum.org/lippi_reloaded_about214.html and google reads this version because i told it so in my .xml sitemap.
So if someone searches lippi reloaded I should rank well even if another forum has copied the titles on our forum.

page title – 2nd most important, The title reads as Football Italia Forum - Lippi Reloaded instead of just Football Italia Forum each thread has it's own title.

description – the 3rd most important usually, the description in the meta tags is Football Italia forum: Italian Football Forum for English speaking supporters of Italian football clubs. So when someone searches Football Italia, google reads that it is in our description 3 times Football Italia forum: Italian Football Forum for English speaking supporters of Italian football clubs.


Other important variables:
validation – The forum is registered here >> https://www.google.com/accounts/S...ers%2Ftools%2Fdashboard&hl=en and the validation google gave is in meta tags. The forum is also validated on yahoo and msn.
.xml – the sitemap that google recognizes. The forum sitemap is http://footballitalia.myfastforum...italiamyfastforumorgforum1php.xml
priority of page – set in the sitemap, index should be 1.0 , two or more pages set to 1.0 is penalised.
updated information – the more frequent a page changes, the higher the ranking, our forum changes maybe 20 times per day (approx 20 posts per day)
page content – when someone searches italia forum then google will see how many times those two words are on the forum1.php page.
clicks – if people search football Italia , and click on this forum more times than another forum then google will rank the forum higher for that search the next time someone searches football Italia
rank when clicked – similar to above
speed of page loading – too many graphics slow down the page loading time, that’s why I’ve done away with as many as possible on our forum.
importance of website – channel4 forum and bbc websites automatically rank higher than just a unestablished forum, making it harder for the likes of ourselves to rank higher than the C4 forum, this is geographical, so if you search football italia forum on google.co.uk then the forum is ranked 2nd after the C4 forum, if you search football italia forum on google.ie the forum is ranked 1st above the C4 forum because the C4 forum is UK based.

Practically useless variable
Keywords – not important at all, but its importantance is perceived to be high among webmasters who never do any research on how to rank their site higher, they just assume it’s important, but it’s variable is given little weight. Maybe if you are ranked 500 and you add keywords then your website will be ranked 495!
However this forums keywords are as follows (meta tag); italian football forum, football italia forum, calcio italia forum, italian football, football italia, calcio italia, italian soccer forum, italian soccer, juventus forum, inter forum, milan forum, roma forum, fiorentina forum, genoa forum, palermo forum, udinese forum, napoli forum, atalanta forum, catania forum, sampdoria forum, lazio forum, torino forum, cagliari forum, siena forum, parma forum, empoli forum, reggina forum, livorno forum, bologna forum, chievo forum, lecce forum, brescia forum, pisa forum, piacenza forum, vicenza forum, azzurri forum, azzurri football forum, serie a forum, serie a, serie b forum, serie b, juventus football forum, inter football forum, milan football forum, roma football forum, fiorentina football forum, genoa football forum, palermo football forum, udinese football forum, napoli football forum, atalanta football forum, catania football forum, sampdoria football forum, lazio football forum, torino football forum, cagliari football forum, siena football forum, parma football forum, empoli football forum, reggina football forum, livorno football forum, bologna football forum, chievo football forum, lecce football forum, brescia football forum, pisa football forum, piacenza football forum, vicenza football forum, azzurri forum, azzurri soccer forum, serie a football forum, serie a football, serie b football forum, serie b football

Penalties
websites linking to the forum – other websites linking to the forum, if another website with a low ranking links to the forum then our ranking is penalized. That’s why I asked five for permission to link to their website (at the time). If a website that ranks higher than our forum then it will increase our ranking. So this can work both ways.
The forum linking to other websites – same as above except when we link to a website
domain level redundancy – penalty, too many domains directing to the one domain, one or two are okay, but 10 will be penalised
content redundancy – irrelevant content

Heavy penalities or outright ban from google index
bad neighborhood – porn, racist, and gambling ads.
spam – robot spamming software, not an issue on the forum (due to the visualization thingy when registering)
other third party penalties – websites linking and other things out of our control
Javascript redirects – redirecting another domain to our domain, this is either very heavily penalized or results in a ban from googles index.
hidden text – text hidden as in white text on a white background, inorder to boost your page content score, heavily penalized or ban.

Footer

The links and text in the footer of the forum which are for search engine purposes are no longer visible when you are logged into the forum, as there is no need for these links other than for search engines, and search engines are prevented from logging into the forum.

The Merge link is also only visible to admins and mods now, as no-one else had the access the use this feature anyway.

So basically it should be less clustered at the bottom of the forum when you are logged in.

Header

The header was re-built as it was not showing flush in some browser versions. 'Add to Favourites' button removed also.


Bookmark | Print | Email

Functions added to top-right of thread menu and top-right within each thread. Bookmark function allows members to share the forum on their social networking site. (spread the word!    )

EPL Fantasy Football League

Removed banner from the bottom of the forum.

If someone wants to setup an EPL fantasy league for the forum, we will of course re-instate the banner.

Forum Terms and Conditions

Previously the link to the T&C's was only on the index page.

A lot of new members might actually enter the forum on the main page (due to the way we instruct google to direct visitors to the main page) and never have seen the index page, so we've moved the link to the T&C's to the bottom of all the non-thread pages.

If anyone wants to add or remove a particular T or C, post it here and we'll guage the opinion's of the membership for any proposal. Obviously, we have to cover our ass when it comes to libellous material though.

Italian Serie A Football FanCast


Banner added to the bottom of the forum.



They will mention the forum from time to time and will link back to us aswel.

A new podcast recording is added to their website every Wednesday evening, on Champions League weeks they add a new podcast on Thursday (instead of Wednesday).
They interview distinguished journalists, so it's a good feature for the forum.

Thanks to delpiero for refering the forum to the FanCast website.

I usually listen to that podcast!  Sweeet

Update to Forum Terms and Conditions

We have updated the T&C's so we ask every member to read them again. The updates are marked in red.

We haven't changed the moderating level so there will be nothing to worry about, it is only from various legal examples that forum administrators can no longer rely on the good sense of 99.999% of the membership and have to spell things out a bit more clearly.

In otherwords, we're covering ourselves.

Link to Forum Terms and Conditions