Tenerife forum

[Andynewsome]

Is everyone in hiding today? Looks like no one is coming out to play!
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[rob]

Hi Andy,
I sneaked off to play golf this morning and have been signing up new clients this afternoon. I'm back now, I thought I'd check up to see if the site was back to normal, unfortunately not.

[Andynewsome]

lol sounds like a slightly more relaxing day than I've had!! - What is it you sign up clients for again?? I noticed everyone's still sniping at each other!
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[Juum]

Yea, what is wrong with everyone??

This is where i come to chill out, watch sara and rob flirt, look for my dream job etc etc

[Andynewsome]

lol I just decided to come here every night this week to take my mind off my crappy life! hey-hey I'm sure things will improve at the weekend, !!work do!! can't be bad! :p
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[Fish Hits Tourisim]

Im here all week

[rob]

Hi Juum, Andy, nice to see you two. Not everyone is sniping, it's an unfortunate fact of life that it happens. Rather like 'road rage' the perpetrators seem to feel safe in their anonimity. Let's ignore it.

[sam]

WHAT IS THE POINT OF POSTING ON EVERY TOPIC TALKING A LOAD OF RUBBISH HAVE THEY NOTHING BETTER TO DO??

[rob]

Hi Andy,
What do I sign up clients for? Many things but one of our strong points is our position on the search engines for many different subjects about tenerife so anyone particularly estate agents who wants to get his/her company noticed on the net can advertise with us.

[Andynewsome]

Ah, I see! I should set up a rival web site :p
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[Juum]

Hey,

Yea, but why are people doing it ?? Just block their ip range and/or make it so you have to register before you can post.

Would be hard setting up a rival for Sun4free, purely because if you search for almost anything online that begins with "Tenerife" you will get a sun4free entry within the first 2 or 3. Been some good SEO going on - even the forums are configured for it

[rob]

Yes juum SEO is our speciality, to us it is by far the most important aspect of web design. Strangely enough I'm in the middle of writing articles about it for the site.

We can block his ip but he can then go to net cafe or reboot to change address.

From the start we decided not to have registration on the site, I hate it and won't register on any site unless I'm desperate to get on that particular one. I hope we don't get too many like this to force us to make it register first.

[Fish hits Tourist]

Search Engine Optimization is all well and good. But if the site looks poor people will leave never to come back! It’s plain to see that not many people visit this site by just looking at the forum hits and membership (i'll come back to that one).

Yes you could block a range (you have done this to me once or twice already), but there are means and ways to get round that. (This post is living proof - I am currently banned).

To decide to allow the public post without registering is suicide! Not only can people do what the they want but to anyone lurking it looks like the forum has 2 members and a dog! Why register when there is no need? With only a handful of registered users it looks to the passer by as there is a little clique of merry friends. This is not good for any forum. Nowhere to hide from the overpowering inner circle etc.

With regard to Rob’s statement that he never registers on a forum unless he really has to. Piff Paff! Show me a list of forums that let you post without registration! Few and far between mate.

A word on blocking ip ranges. As your forum grows in popularity (if it does) you will find more and more abusers arriving. You will also find that many people will log on when here on holiday via a cyber cafe. If you start blocking their IP's you are in double whammy trouble...

Your cyber cafe users won’t be able to log on, it will tell them they are banned and the cyber cafe owners may get a tad angry when their customers leave to find another cafe that is not banned and or ask for a refund of their money. A case point is documented about a very popular holiday forum which was threatened with legal action last year by a cyber cafe after they had their router's IP blocked. The cafe lost much needed tourists custom. When the punters realised they could not log on to their beloved forum they left for somewhere they could, but not before asking for a refund from the poor cafe operator!

Basically you need to tighten up your security. Take off the rose tinted glasses Rob. Read up on forum culture and history! You have a word filter with this software so use it to stop tossers posting foul language, this sill save your "regulars" assuming the mantel of god and telling everyone not to swear all the time.

There are virtually no popular forums that do not require registration before posting and most ask for a REAL email address to join! (Not hotmail etc.)

You think I am a kiddy, mucking about. That’s up to you. I have been playing with you. Your site is open to allsorts of abuse, most worryingly it would have been simple for me to backdoor it and place tracking cookies on all members browsing habits etc, all with the anonymity of a guest!

I'll stop short of saying you are foolish and I wish you good luck
with getting this off the ground. You have a long way to go!

You can unblock the ranges now. You have my word I wont be back. If you want to email me Rob, you can get me on... fishytourist@gmail.com, Ive just set it up now, so if some of you are thinking of spamming me feel free, i wont be using this account again!

Sara... Get out of your huff and come back to your freinds, I wont be bothering you again! I hope you learned something about moderating a forum after allowing a user to drag you into the mud and ending up in the middle of a flame war. Experience is everything. Stay cool next time flowerpot

Good Luck

[Juum]

Im afraid the only thing I agree with fishy about is the registration. IMO, to post they should have to be registered. Otherwise you do get idiots who abuse the system *cough*fishy Make it so you can still view it without being registered is fine, but in all honestly, registration takes a few minutes of time and for this forum, it is worth it.

I disagree though about the SEO vs. design. Although I am not a fan of Sun4free's design (i've told rob before :p) the reason i use it more than any other site is because it IS packed with information.

Why do people use Hotmail? It is a damn awful design in my opinion, its buggy as hell. Because EVERYONE knows about it. Google, is just a basical table with a logo and a search box at the end of the day; yet it is probably one of the most visited sites on the internet.

When it comes to design, its whatever floats your boat really. A site that looks good to one person, could look awful to another.

Blocking an IP range would be a pain for a few people, but to get rid of idiots its sometimes worth it. In the UK, more and more ISP's seem to be offering Static IP's for broadband nowadays so ones your banned, your gone.

I was once banned on a forum, because someone was being racist and a plain retard on it. Unfortuantly, it was the exact same IP as mine, although it wasn't me. It was actually someone who went to the same college as me, therfore it was the college's ip range that was banned. Small world

Admittadly though, there are always ways round things. Most people nowadays know how to connect to a proxy in Brazil, Korea, South Africa or wherever, so they can browse the internet on someone elses unknown IP. A search for annoymizer brings way too many results nowadays.

[rob]

Interesting points and I've no doubt we will have to go to registration at some point for posting. We were hoping to keep the forum friendly and informative, we try to log on as often as possible to answer queries and I spend quite a bit of time getting info for people, often when they're too idle to find it themselves. Many forums are built and then left to run themselves with no input or help from the site owners. Just one small point ...when i said that I don't register unless I'm desperate to get on I said site NOT forum.