Ask Cerberus Anything

So, I figured I would post this and allow you all to ask me anything. For those who do not know who I am, I have been in the forum business for about 14 years. I have been doing online stuff since the age of 12, which was a long time ago LOL I sold my first website 1 year later at 13 for 2500 bux which kind of got me hooked on the whole online world. My primary knowledge base is anything computer related really, mostly concentrated on software coding and such. I also at one time was VP of Marketing for a rather large firm that kind of got me into the whole SEO thing. Some consider me to be somewhat of an expert on that, I just think I get lucky from time to time

I met Brandon some years back and I have kind of just been following him around for awhile. I consider him to be a good friend of mine and that is how I wound up here. He is a good guy to follow around.

But, if you need help with something? Just want to strike up a conversation? Review your site? Just ask me in this thread Hopefully people have some questions LOL

 

Cough form questions cough gag oh no choking Ill check it out later

 

Plan - You need a strategy before you start
Budget - Set a firm budget and do not go over it. No need to waste money
Good domain - A domain that contains keywords you want to target. Start the SEO out right and pick a good domain that matches your content

I would also find a core group of members before even starting. If you have to offer them something in return for their work and time. But, you can not do it alone. Any forum relies on its member base to succeed. I would also suggest not over doing it sub forum wise. Too many sub forums look busy and takes a lot more work to add content to them all. I would suggest start out with your core content, then expand as time goes on.

And most of all be creative. You never know what will catch on, maybe overnight your site becomes the next big thing. I have seen it happen for clients before. The greatest problem in the world is your site going down due to too much traffic

 

I know a ton of them and back in college used more than I know now. But here is a list of the ones I use the most today. You can kind of see the trend there, they are all used for automation and botting, for the most part. I know others but that is my go to list ..

Autohotkey
C++
C#
Curl
Delphi
Java
Jscript
Php
Python
VB.Net

 

I prefer PC over Mac. Mostly because it is a pain to use any windows program on a Mac. And even when you do get them to work, they usually fail. I have always used Windows, and I know it better. So PC. Though, I am also partial to Linux. Maybe if someone donated me a Mac I would like them more... Just saying..

I have a ton of older PC games I like to play from time to time, and that is another reason. I have only ever owned one Mac, a MacBook Pro. And it just did not spark my fancy. I am not saying one is better than the other, just a preference.

 

It is the three headed hell dog Cerberus. I have always been a huge fan of Greek Mythology and when I was working on the site EpicOpinion.com I needed a username. My friend chose Cerberus for me and she even picked out the avatar. So, in honor of her I have kept it and still use it from time to time. Plus, I really like it. I forget who the artist is, but he did an awesome job

 

I have a theory that the dryer from time to time opens a portal to another dimension where these creatures maintain their existence. And all of their recipes require one sock. They never take more than they need. So, from time to time they pop in, grab a sock, and disappear back to their world. It is the only logical assumption due to everyone having the same problem of disappearing socks. Your sock made a nice soup or broth. I suggest you buy more socks. Though, you may want to hand dry them on a line or something, as to not continue to allow the creatures to feed on them.

 

You are most welcome

 

I currently do not own any forums. The last couple forums I did own, I sold. Sometimes real life gets too busy and instead of neglecting them, I would rather let someone else take them over.

The more recent forums of which I have owned was TrueCheaters.com (Botting site), ArgueCrazy.com (General Discussion/opinion site) , CookingJunkies.com (Cooking site) , EpicOpinion.com (Another discussion/forum game type site)

http://www.cookingjunkies.com/
http://truecheaters.com/forum.php

These are the only two that are still open and running. I have no idea who owns them now as I believe they have changed hands multiple times. I have gone through a ton of sites over the years. Mostly because I built them to make money, get them making money, then sell for profit.

 

Yes, this is a fairly simple program to make. Though, the only problem with this is that most email services have limits placed on their servers. So, you could only send so many emails a day using a free email address. It is very rare to find hosting that will let you spam with their servers. Now, with that said, if you have a dedicated server and are paying a lot of money for said server, I imagine they would let you email without limits.

There are many ways you can go to achieve this, the easiest being some type of SMTP library. Then you could build you own simple program. Or you could go the script route. It should be pretty easy using PHP or any language for that matter. I know spammers like to use python for stuff like that, but I myself have never really liked the whole spam the email marketing strategy. I hate getting spam and would feel bad spamming people. A simple Google will return 100s of results and all the needed code. But, as for difficulty it is not really anything advanced. I did a google to see what was out there and this one seems interesting.

https://gist.github.com/ligthyear/1838132

Though, as I said I really do not condone that type of action, but each to their own. I like how the coder does not really tell people how to use that code