Forums

[jamesray50]

I'm just wondering how many different forums do you belong to? And what are trackbacks and tags and why would I use them?

Thanks

[greenoak]

im here and on 4 relaTED TO MY RETAIL BUSINESS...ON the others the talk might be more about what color to put on the walls or what the customers are up to..or the hottest decorating trend.... all important parts of our business........ good online info and conversation has been real big for us....actually finding helpful places not just trying to sell you somethnig is pretty hard tho..
i totally value the info but i have also gotten big sales from peers from the forums....

[Harold Mansfield]

A few years back I used to belong to every webmaster forum out there. Probably 15 or so. Most of them are gone now and I probably frequent 6. This one, 2 webmaster forums, 2 domain forums and a Wordpress Membership forum/community/developers thingy.

Interesting though, of the Webmaster forums I went from being the person with all of the questions to the person answering questions. I probably haven't posted a question on those in over 2 years.
This is probably the only forum left that I can actually learn something or can get a different, educated opinion from a variety of sources.

The other forums are now just full of noobs looking for tricks and shortcuts. No actual discussions about anything. And most of the seasoned webmasters that actual have experience to share are gone.

[jamesray50]

I've found a couple of bookkeeping forums where I have been able to answer questions. There doesn't seem to be too many forums specific to my area of knowledge. But I guess anything may help. If I can keep helping, maybe some of them will look at my website and maybe I can get some business.

[vangogh]

At the moment I'm here and on one webmaster forum. This one takes up most of my forum time though.

Trackbacks are a way for two pages to communicate with each other. The idea is this page sends a trackback to another and that other pages then adds a link automatically back to this one. In the past there was a specific trackback url you'd need to add in order to alert the other page. Now most content management systems will be alerted just by the link itself and they don't require you to add the trackback url.

Tags are a way to help categorize what a thread is about. For example say you tagged this thread with the word "trackback." When people later search the forum looking for information about trackbacks the system knows this thread is about trackbacks because of the tag you added. It's more likely to show up in search results here and even in general search engines.

You don't need to use either trackbacks or tags when starting a thread, though if you can think of a couple words to describe your thread you may want to add those words as tags to help others find your thread when searching.

[KristineS]

I belong to this forum, and several industry specific forums for the company for which I work. This is the only one that I'm on just for fun, so to speak.

[Business Attorney]

Mostly I spend my time on this forum. Before this one started, I was a regular on the "other" SBF that effectively went into a coma, and I was a moderator on yet another small business forum that suddenly simply wasn't there.

I am also a member on several legal advice forums but I don't visit those regularly because the active parts of those forums are people seeking help with consumer-type legal issues rather than business legal issues.

I am a member of two forums that are mostly for webmasters and another one mostly dealing in domain name issues. I visit those only sporadically. Since I am not in the webmaster business (except for my own websites), I don't get much out of those websites and mostly contribute to their legal sections occasionally.

[brookeandcamera]

I also frequent a forum for Women in Small Business called The Switchboards (http://www.theswitchboards.com).

[J from Michigan]

I belong to a Bass Guitar forum, a 'TV talk' type forum, and a website design forum.

I joined here because you guys actually have conversations, and not just self promote.

[Spider]

And not just any old conversation -- Harold and VG could talk the hind legs off a donkey!!!

:-D

[Harold Mansfield]

And not just any old conversation -- Harold and VG could talk the hind legs off a donkey!!!

:-D

And you would still disagree that it happened :) (that's a big cheesy grin)

[J from Michigan]

Apparently, there is software that copies previous text, for forum posting.

I kept seeing things I said, and thought something was wrong with the "quote function" as I didn't see a response.
Turns out they were just re-posting what I said like 30 seconds ago... strange!

[billbenson]

I'm on a webmaster forum that has been around for quite a while. Pretty small but it has some highly technical people and some people that have made a lot of money as webmasters and willing to help. There are good forums out there, they are just hard to find. Also, usually you will have to spend the time helping others and fit in to really benefit from most forums.