How do you brand yourself or your business, where do you stop? I’ll list off some of the ways I’ve continued to build my brand, and some things you can do to build your personal brand.

As some of you know, I recently sold a website dedicated to helping vBulletin admins. On that forum I had two sections, one that listed off all the clients I had worked with (that approved to be mentioned) & one that listed several of the testimonials from those clients. At the time of selling that forum I had worked on over 300 vBulletin sites. This was over a 3-year span & many of those admins would need repeat work (vB upgrades, new sites etc..). When I sold the site I built a new “vBulletin Services” page on this blog. Right around that same time that I sold the site, I picked up a great job with the state – I’m still very happy employed and loving it. I knew that I wouldn’t be taking on as many jobs as before, so promoting the services back on this blog wasn’t a priority.

I’m starting to clear up some time and thought I might as well take care of this so I can mark it off my list. I’m going to re-post all the clients I had worked with, a general outline of what I did and a link/screenshot to their site. I’ll setup a category for my clients and testimonials. I also have the option with the current style to display 9 featured client sites. I think it says something about webhosting right now, and you might see the screenshots displayed across the top, those will be changed soon, I’m hoping to have everything transferred over by the end of this next week. I may not end up using this green style you see, I want to have an option to show featured post on the home page, like my IPB vs vBulletin post should be on the front, it was getting a lot of comments, as well as a few others that have a high comment count.

So this is how I’ll continue to build my brand, by showing the work I’ve done and what my clients say about me. In the 3+ years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never had an upset customer with problems that we couldn’t resolve. Usually it’s a communication error, and that’s one of the reasons I like to talk on the phone with clients, but I request all site requirements done via email. That way I have a solid copy and know exactly what a client wants. It’s best to be clear and concise and keep good documentation of the work at hand.

In short, all my subscribers will get a few updates with a dozen or so post it in, I’ll try to get through them as fast as possible so it’s not so annoying for the subscribers.

Thanks as always for all the support!

Let’s face it, I’m addicted to vBulletin (3.8)

I couldn’t stay away from the backend of a vBulletin forum for long. With the vBulletin Services that I offer, it’s very helpful to have a site setup to tweak  settings. The dev server wasn’t cutting it and I’m not really fond of vBulletin 4.0.

I’ve always said I wouldn’t start a vBulletin forum without vBSEO, so when a pair came up for sale at a decent price, I had to snag them up. So now I had the script, now what type of forum should I run? Well I’m not interested in another webmaster type forum, I’ve thought about starting several different niche forums but I defiantly don’t have time to manage all that, so I’ve decided to try a “general forums” type forum. Finally it was on to search for a domain; I scanned all over the webmaster forums trying to find a short brand-able .com but wasn’t having any luck. The domain I found has a hyphen it in which I’ve never been fond of, but I think I found a pretty good one considering the site I’ll be running.

I picked up www.General-Forums.com from godaddy.

My plans for this forum are to actually merge several smaller forums into it. I’ve already picked up a small database that has been imported. I’ve put a few bids down on some at digitalpoint, if you know of a quality (no warez or spam) database and/or site, please contact me and send me a link to the auction page.

I’ve been blessed enough that a few people that saw me tweeting about this have offered to help out! I truly have great friends and appreciate every one of you!! If you would like to help than what I would suggest is to register on the forum and shoot me a PM or email and I’ll set you up in the contributors group so you can see the forums as we piece together all the databases.

Once I have a good selection of forums & content put together (shooting for 500K post) and well organized, I’ll open everything up for spiders, guest, and open up public posting for registered users. I’ll than put together an email newsletter to blast out to all the members of the forum. This will be a reminder for everyone across what may be upwards of 20+ sites/databases.

I’m looking forward to seeing this site grow as much as you are.

Do you think it’s wise to start general forums? Would you ever start a forum on such a broad range of topics?

Yesterday Internet Brands (owners of Jelsoft) released their vBulletin 4.0 Gold edition just like they promised us earlier this year. Less than 24 hours we had our first patch release; I wouldn’t be surprised if they had another update or two before the end of the year. There has been a lot of negative discussion about the iNet take over and it all started for me with the vbulletin-4-0-going-cost-even-17392.html” target=”_blank”>leaked screenshots back in May. At the time I was a little upset about the price hike but looking back, it really wasn’t that big of an issue. I don’t currently have an active vBulletin site, but I do have a dev site setup with vBSEO and I’m testing a customized setup of URL setting based off what Brent uses on Mustang Evolution. These will be very short URL’s and easier to remember. I don’t have plans as of now to open up a vBulletin forum, but I need a dev site to stay up to date if I’m going to continue offering vBulletin services.

What are your thoughts on the new 4.x series so far? I like the forums; I think they could use some fine tuning. I haven’t tested the blogs but from the quick glance it didn’t seem like they changed much. I don’t really care for the new vBCMS. I don’t like the fact that you can’t place your CMS in the root and forums in a subfolder. It just seems rough around the edges but what better what to get feedback than to release the product to the masses if it works like advertised or not.

I’ve been playing around with IP.Content on IPBSetup.com and it isn’t sold as a CMS, but you can make one with it pretty easily. That’s what I’m using on the home page, and here is a demo page I had made a few days before testing things out. Right now I’m just using a free CSS template I found on google, but you can see I’m able to add blocks (like the recent post feed on the right hand side of the home page) I can make database pages to, I need to play around with it, but I like that you can just past HTML into an editor and make a page. This is another thing the new vBulletin CMS is lacking.

Over the past 2 or 3 years I’ve had the pleasure of watching Chase Speers excel with his state specific forums. He’s won a number of awards for his flagship forum (TalkDelaware.com) including BOTM on my old forum “vBSetup” as well as on vBulletin.com & vBulletin.org. TalkDelaware also won best website in Delaware for 2007 beating out the local newspaper! Chase has a state forum for Pennsylvania called TalkPA.net which has also won a few awards and honorable mentions.

Chase started chatting on forums about 5 years ago on a cell phone forum. He enjoyed it so much; he soon offered his help moderating the forums and became good friends with the owner Steve. That forum eventually was sold. Chase & Steve started up a few more forums, but Chase wanted full ownership of a forum, just had to think of a good topic. That’s where TalkDelaware comes into play, there is an “official” Delaware website that Chase was part of, but it didn’t seem like management had a full understanding of what could be done with their forums. Chase was determined to make a better forum for the state of Delaware, and that’s exactly what he did.

The official Delaware site was full of spam, trolls and just about every nightmare we as forum owners can think of. It was full of rude people who didn’t care who they pissed off and weren’t afraid to let their voice be heard. Chase was optimistic about the good people on this forum, and that’s who he would target when setting up his own forum. Chase became a very active user on that forum helping out everyone he could, all the time having his new Delaware forum linked to from his signature and maybe in some of the post as well. This can be a long process, but will get you quality users over time and in some cases; they will add your forum link in their sigs, thus recruiting more users. The only thing I would caution you about using this method, if you don’t want to get labeled as a spammer or possibly kicked of the forum you’re recruiting from, so test the waters and see what you can get away with.
If you look at the TalkDelaware forum, you’ll notice a custom style that matches icons seen throughout the state. This is the same on TalkPA as well, and I think it was a vital decision in his forum being successful. You want to let your members feel comfortable, and what’s a better way than tying in some of the great historical points of your state, into your forums.

To quickly summarize what I’m trying to get across in this article; don’t ever give up, be passionate about your topics and give your members what they want. Having a unique skin will help if it’s tied to the subject matter like TalkDelaware is. Provide help across all forums will help your membership grow, just like Chase did on the old Delaware forum, he offered his help and the members followed him over to his new and better forum. Chase also provides help on webmaster forums, including graphics help and suggestions to managing your community, which I feel he knows a great deal on both topics. Provide help to your members, and offer them incentives to stay on your site, and they will help advertise your site without you even knowing about it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the first article in my series on being a successful forum owner, please comment and let me know what you would like to know about in my next article.

My thoughts on vBulletin and IP.Board.

If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I ran a vBulletin powered forum for many years and just recently sold it. I’ll try to outline a few of the reasons why I “switched to the dark side” and setup an Invision Powered Services forum. The number one reason I would have even considered sticking with vBulletin is the vBSEO product. IPB does have SEO mods but they just don’t seem to match up to the power that vBSEO brings to the vBulletin platform. With that being said, I made a thread on the IPB support forums titled “How to SEO our IPB forum” I’ve picked up a few tips which I’ve implemented on my IPBSetup forum, but there has to be a few more options I haven’t found yet.

I didn’t have a problem at first with the buyout of Jelsoft to internet brands, but after seeing all the old developers leave and the drastic changes that have taken place; I see why people were getting so upset over it. I like how Invision actually uses their CMS for their homepage, vBulletin just has some generic html pages up which do look good, but it’s not showcasing the ability of their suit when they are pushing hard for sales. I had a chance to do some early beta testing on vBulletin and boy did it have a lot of bugs. I know it was in beta but I would of thought some of the major issues would be been fixed in development, it seems they just want to push something out and make it appear as if they care about the end forum user. I think they are really just interested in their own network (iNet) but I could be wrong and I hope I am because I still have a lot of friends that use vBulletin for their forums.

One thing I really like about IPB and wish vBulletin would consider adding this to their lineup is the search box in the admin control panel of IPB. You know how on yahoo if you start typing something you’ll get a dropdown box with suggestions? You’ll find the same thing in the IPB admincp area; it’s been very helpful for me since I don’t know my way around IPB yet.

I don’t think it will be long and IPB will be the #1 forum software for professionals, especially the way iNET is running Jelsoft. I do wish everyone the best, I still love vBulletin but IPB is climbing up with every chance I get to mess around and figure things out. My next big purchase is going to be IP.Content and I’ll have a tightly integrated CMS that will match my forum. This is something I had always wanted from vBulletin and even with the new vBCMS, it just doesn’t fulfill my needs like IP.Content will.

What are some things you like about vBulletin over IPB or IPB over vBulletin? I look forward to your comments. This is a dofollow blog, so search engines will spider your links.

I’ll go over what it really takes to be a successful forum owner and how you should go about building your empire in the following weeks. I have a few people that I’ve already mentioned this blog post to, and they are very interested in being showcased. If you’ve built a successful forum and would like me to do a blog post on you, please contact me via email and I’ll consider adding you to the list.
Some of the topics I’ll highlight will be.

• How you can easily build backlinks and traffic to your forum.
• What you should consider when building your community (members point of view)
• What topics/threads should you start up on your forum?
• Should you use a CMS?
• Types of sites you can build to support your forum.
• What forum script I would suggest.
• Check out the competition.

I’m looking forward to writing these reviews, I’ve had the privilege of watching these forums grow up while I ran vBulletinSetup and I’m honored to have known these admins.

Here is my first article in the series. (I’ll update this list as the articles get published)

• How to run a successful state niche forum

I’ve been running vBSetup for years, since June of 06 actually. I’m not going to lie and say I won’t be sad to sell, but it had to be done. I just don’t have the time to commit to the forums like I did before Leo came around.  I’ll still visit the forums a few times a week, but not having to worry about software/hardware updates and issues is going to be a huge relief for me. I announced to the members yesterday of the purchase and had an overall positive take on the acquisition. I look forward to seeing what Crowdgather does with the site. I know they have some great resources and can really push the forum to the next level. I’ll miss being able to email or market anything to 12,000 users with a flip of a switch, but I think I’ll still be talking to all the active users via Twitter or other forums.

I’m not leaving the forum scene all together; I had purchased IPBHelp a few months back when I was thinking about expanding my services to IPB. I got a job with the state shortly after I purchased that license and URL and didn’t really have time for it. I still don’t have a lot of time, but enough to tinker around with it once a week. I’ve already added a WordPressMU to the root as well as IP.Converge which will allow users to login to the forum and their blogs with the same login (email & pass). I don’t have it working 100% yet, but it shouldn’t take me much longer. I’ll always love vBulletin, but doubt I’ll ever own another vBulletin license unless I win the lotto and free up all my time, which I don’t even play so that’s not likely..lol

Everything else is going great; Leo is crawling and getting close to walking. I’ve been busy “baby proofing” the house because Leo likes to open the cabinets and any drawer he can reach. He is finally sleeping through the night which is AWESOME! It only took him 7 month but his mother and I are very grateful for the added hours of sleep.

Well that’s a short update of what’s going on, I plan to post a disc golf blog post at some point, so that will probably be the next update you see on this blog.

Have a good one everyone, and thanks for reading this blog post. Please Retweet it (if you’re on Twitter) or share the link with your friends. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

Hey everyone, hows it going ?
I haven’t had time to update my sheley.org blog in some time.
As you see, I’ve updated the style here again, some of you may have remember me talking about free wordpress styles, well this is another one I purchased to distribute but it’s kind of a pain to setup and I’m not sure how well it would go over. We’ll see, give me a month or so and I’ll get it up to share with everyone.

Anyways.. Life has been good for me, Alissa and I are getting the house cleaned up to get ready to show/sell. We are looking for a house with more room and a bit newer then the one we are currently in. School is cruising along fine, I’m still passing and looking forward to spring break! We are working with cisco switches, it’s pretty interested stuff, at least for me it is.

What have I been working on ? The end of last year I got a call from a past client in Cali asking me if I wanted to fly over for some website meetings.. Of course I said yes! It was awesome and warm! I think I’ll be going back sometime, this time with Alissa. I’m currently the head Marketing Coordinator for the Crowdgather network.. I’ll let you know more about what crowdgather is when we official go public. All I can say is this.. Currently I’m in charge of 20 forums and I have to make sure they are optimized for search engines, as well as monetize all the forums so my boss can start making some money. We haven’t added ad’s on many forum yet, I’ve just been working on getting the site optimized and posting some links around the web back to it.

With that said, the vBulletin Services work that I was doing during the week, I don’t have near the time for.. I’ve created a vBulletin team that is composed of about 20 vbulletin programmers and designers that I’ve been pushing the work off on to.. It’s worked out for everyone because I asked that the vb team help on the forums, especially if they are making money off vBulletinSetup.

Other then that, hasn’t been to much going on. I’ll try to update this more often now that I have the magazine style template setup.

cheers
-Brandon