How about a theme/style for this forum. Its looks like this forum is a hit, time to show it is a hit.

Thanks for the suggestion!

... changing the theme actually needs a fair bit of work because I need to modify all the special add-ons I've put on about 50 files at least. Changing the colors and simple things of the theme is quite easy.

Also a new version of the Forum (phpBB 3, we're on phpBB2 now) which looks awesome is almost launched so I'm probably going to wait for that and then switch over to it when it's 100% stable and has certain mods I want.

Right now I'm working on integrating a really good gallery system into which members can upload pictures and link them into their posts for example. The album that is on now has a lot of limitations and doesn't even seem to be working.

Also I've got to get more smilies!

yeah, best wait for the new version and do every fresh..

Album is now upgraded and has a few sections to which all members can upload pictures.

I think that in terms of a forum, positive and interesting topics are very important. Mikko, looks like you have the job about always coming with new topics.

You're right content is key - and all forum members contribute to the content .

I've made the forum very search-engine friendly now so within a few weeks the threads and all posts should start showing up on google-searches which will hopefully bring in more members.

Hey Mikko,

How do you excatly make the website search engne friendly? Looks like i should hire you to do the completion of my website. My designer is being a little dumb with these ideas. You seem to know more about websites that she does.

I could write for days on optimizing for search engines and there are millions of websites online that cover all kinds of aspects , and the methods change over the years as well because search engines change the way they rank website!

One difference now from a few days ago in these forums is that instead of seeing "http://www.kartingasia.com/forum/viewforum.php?=3" in your browser address bar you now see "http://www.kartingasia.com/forum/general-karting-talk-f3.html" . Search engines take into consideration the words in the filename so obviously if you want people to find the forum when searching for karting it's a lot better to have "general-karting-talk" in there rather than "viewforum." That's just one of many changes I made to improve the site's search engine-friendliness.

Search engines are getting a lot smarter as well and are able to interpret the quality of content for example - so high quality unique content brings good results in search engines. 5-10 years ago to get a top result for "karting" all you had to do was stuff the page full of the word. So in effect it is becoming easier in a waybecause you just have to make a good user-friendly content rich website and the search engines will reward you for it.

I think can forgot about the skins for the forum. With the color tweaks now, Its fast and looking good enuff.

How about some RSS and a Favicon instead.

RSS for the main page news? Will have to look into that. The news system I'm using now is a bit limited so I'm looking for a new system.

Whaddaya think for a favicon, just a nice big "K"?

Hey Mikko,

If i wanted to hire you for search engine optimization, Do you do that?

Yep, Spend most of the time in the forums, it be nice to have a RSS update for the news.

Favicon prefect..

I'll do anything for enough money. Optimizing for search engines is usually an on-going process and takes lot of time.

Yeah? Well State your price. 50 Usd, 100 usd, 1000 usd, 10,000 usd. Everyone has a price. Haha.

Hey Mikko,

Any chance of making the avatar size restricter a little bigger? I'm having trouble finding the right size for the avatar. What about making the max size to be 25kb?