advertising

i have a section on my forum for members to post links to their forum, if they post a link to mine on theirs

i think a lot of members take advantage of this, and seem to only post a thread in the welcome section, a thread in the links section, then leave!

how do i find a way to make sure this section isnt abused?

 

Increase a min. 10 posts to use that option. No idea how to do that though...

 

im not sure how to do it either, will have a look in admin, and if not, i could easily just add it to the rules in that section and make sure members stick with it

 

Your just asking to get spammed,,, those people are just looking for links and probably will not post a link back to your site.

Personally, I would invest into some good link directory software, and make it some only people with X number of post can submit links. And make sure the links are nofollow.

 

yeah, your right, i do get loads of members who say that if i join theirs, they will join mine, when i promote on other forums. usually they turn out to be the worst possible members, know little about the subject my forum is about, and make only a few posts. i always make sure they link back though.....making them actually come back is harder!

maybe i should demand more from members who want to do this....10 posts is better than one i guess, but i would rather have more posts per member than that.

 

Personally, if you really want to keep that forum, you could make it not visible unless people are logged in, which would also keep those links out of the search engines.

Requiring a certain # of posts to post in that forum could create several low quality posts.

 

hmmmm thats a good idea

 

Sometimes life is full of irony.

 

lovemyspam... lol

 

Make it have 30+ posts required to go on that section.

 

ya the best idea is to only allow those members to post in that area who already have 30+ posts in other sections of the forum

 

My vote would also go towards a directory script that is just for links, you might be able to integrate it with your phpbb forum. I know phpld has mods for vB, I think they have one for phpbb too.

 

See if there is some way where you can limit them on making only 1 topic

 

i decided to properly delete the promotion forum and stop advertising in signatures, just in the website field in their profile. my forum is not a promotion forum, and as much as i would increase the amount of posts needed to advertise, it would still get abused by people who joined the forum without having an interest in the subject of the forum, just to post in off topic til they can advertise, then never be seen again.

 

thanks for your reply!this thread so useful for me!!!