I can barely move my right arm/hand/fingers… I’ve clicked the delete button hundreds of times today due to the massive influx of spambots. I should know better, having launched so many websites in the past but in my excitement I forgot to implement some antispam measures. Finally the spambots found a new place to attack while I was dreaming of the Utes beating Oregon last night. About 400 bots registered and posted some kind of content spam, fortunately none of which made it to the actual forums. The spam was within their profiles, which made them easy to spot and delete. But the social software I’m using makes administering this type of thing difficult. I chose WP for the site because of a few reasons, over the other engine I know well called Joomla. In the Joomla world dealing with that issue would have been much easier.
Spambot example… adios
Membership has been at a massive growth rate for the first three days, but slowed today, probably because of the Hub related posts at UFN being buried and no new ones posted. I’m not personally posting any solicitations and quite honestly at this point there is quite a revolt of members there who are against the Hub’s existence. So that’s fine. I’m still a loyal member there and hope to stay that way, while also continuing to work and build this into the best Ute fan site, period.
Site Improvements
Today I took on a few site improvements. I put some new modules on the right column near the forum. One shows forum stats and the other the most recent topics. The modules out of the box looked terrible so I fixed them up a bit. I also did quite a bit of research on a threaded view for the forum posts and replies. Each individual topic is threaded, sort of but not what people are asking for. I think something like that would need to be hard-coded. So not likely this early on until I have time to do coding in the winter.
The first person who wants to advertise sent me an email this morning. I called him and we had a nice chat.
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I’m not sure what, if any, your plans are to monetize this site. If you do move in that direction, please avoid the move that uf.n made in the way ads are served. I have no problem with ads that simply take space or otherwise don’t intrude with my browsing activities. On uf.n they became intrusive and obstructive to the user experience. I can’t tell you the number of times ads popped up with autoplay videos while my speakers were on during working hours. I tried to support his advertisers, but finally gave up, installed adblocker, and even stopped paying attention to his banner ads. I hope you seriously consider sticking with local advertisers and not subscribing to a national ad service (if this is viable).
Ads can be tastefully placed so as not to ruin the user experience. I do not believe in takeover ads or intrusive ads that make you close windows, wait 10 seconds, or hit cancel and so on. Redirects are an absolute no way.