Ahhh, meta tags. That's a horse of another color.Originally Posted by Rogar
Our current meta tags are rather generic such as "simple living" & "discussion forum". I'll go through the thread tags list and apply those that may be useful to the meta tag list, plus, any suggestions would be helpful.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler." ~ Albert Einstein
Continuing the discussion, I wonder if a simple face lift of the forum topics and a streamlining would help develop interest from new visitors.
The environment could become "living lightly on the planet". Finance becomes "achieving financial independence". Gardening becomes, "permaculture and home food production. Holidays is "simple holidays" Or what ever. Maybe just more trendy terms, but also adds focus to simple living/YMOYL.
IMHO, a forum on simple living has become cluttered. There are some topics that are not used often. The personals forum, spreading the word, housing exchange and travel, and so on. Volunteering might be combined with creating community. And so on. Again, just adding some focus on the main issues.
Last edited by Rogar; 10-31-12 at 10:34am.
I was just thinking along the same lines Rogar. More updated forum titles and letting Alan go wild with meta tags seems like it has the potential to increase traffic. I know Urban Homesteading and Permaculture are both popular topics right now. Full disclosure, they interest me a lot so I could be biased. Anyway, they are hybrids of current forums so we'd have to figure out how to merge and reorganize so we don't end up with too many, overly specific categories. Simple Retirement sounds catchy, but also sounds exclusive of other personal financial topics. Other ideas?
"Back when I was a young boy all my aunts and uncles would poke me in the ribs at weddings saying your next! Your next! They stopped doing all that crap when I started doing it to them... at funerals!"
Just wanted to add that the membership here does an outstanding job of self moderation. There are occasional crimes of passion committed, but they tend to be few and far between (even in election years!). That is, IMO, a good thing because most of the sites I've visited that require moderation by the staff eventually dissolve into chaos or are commandeered by bullies. I have no worries about that happening here.
"Back when I was a young boy all my aunts and uncles would poke me in the ribs at weddings saying your next! Your next! They stopped doing all that crap when I started doing it to them... at funerals!"
I've enjoyed reading this thread, as a new member.
Just want to say, when I joined, I didn't see anything wrong at all with this forum?
There's a healthy mix of people that sure, maybe a strong % are already advanced in living somewhere on the spectrum of a simple life. However, I don't feel that is a negative thing.
There's a place for political content. I prefer as a military spouse to not engage in those types of discussions. However, I can appreciate reading them, and if I feel that I can interject from a military family's perspective in a way that I'm comfortable with - will do that.
I do think, to be constructive about things that may help, is to cater to the various types of simple living folk.
We have the urban dweller that may take transit, lives in a brownstone or loft, may grow veggies on a rooftop..
We have the suburbanites that live in a planned community and keep their community/resources within a small radius
We have the rural homesteaders.
We also have the tiny/small house folks.
There's no exacting definition to describe a person who lives simply (voluntarily or by necessity).
So many ways of living this lifestyle.
So, if you opened up the floor where individually those folks can congregate and discuss specific topics, that may entice the lurkers to want to participate.
And then, there's many that are coming from TMMO/ERE/MMM ways of life, paying off debt, preparing for retirement or early retirement. So, that in many ways may bring a person to living more simply, so they can earmark more $ to achieve those goals.
Reduce the complexities of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. - Edwin Way Teale
We also need to remember that, although we are small in number, some of us live outwith the USA and Canada!
On an unrelated topic: I hate that my ipad doesn't recognise the good Scots term of 'outwith' and keeps making it two words!
I wouldn't worry about the meta-tag keywords. They have been abused to death by SEOs and spammers so Google pretty much ignores them, except to maybe give your site a penalty if it looks like it is over-optimized for the search engines. You can actually sign up any site for webmaster tools in Bing and Google and they will give you feedback on if your site has any crawl errors or meta-tags that need improving. You could also use Google analytics for the forum if that isn't already being done now which would provide additional usage and ranking data.
It's funny you mentioned that because I occasionally google my "real" name (an unusual one) to see what comes up (and it's always surprising!) but I just googled my screen name "Spartana" and there was nothing about this board. However, when I went to "images" lo and behold there were some photos I had put up on this site. One of my current house, one of me on my motorcycle, some from the coast guard, and several others...there was even one of Alan's avatar there because he had responded to a post from me. When I clicked on the photos they all took me to this website and into the original thread the photo was posted in. I always delete my photos after the thread has run out of steam, however they apparently remain in cyberspace forever more. Not a big deal to me but something other's may want to be aware of.
That is a notion we've worked very hard to instill in our teenage daughter.
"Back when I was a young boy all my aunts and uncles would poke me in the ribs at weddings saying your next! Your next! They stopped doing all that crap when I started doing it to them... at funerals!"
Yeah it's scary! While I don't mind so much if photos I posted online - here or elsewhere - get out there, what I do mind is when friends post photos of me with my name and THOSE get out there. I can imagine with teenagers that kind of thing happens all the time. So not only do they have to watch out for what they post, but watch out what they send to other people and not to be in...er... compromising positions other people's photos! Scary!
As for bringing new members here maybe there is some way to have an opening pages, or pages, about simple living and it's various aspects. Sort of like you had on the old forums when you would log on. I always enjoyed reading the newsletter but enjoyed the "front page" thing just as much. However that would mean more work for someone to write something every month or so and keep it fresh. Probably too much work. I personally love the NRMF and read their stuff, but it's more YMOYL based rather than the self-sufficancy, off the grid kind of stuff many people here (not me!!) seem to be looking for. OK so I'm no help :-)!
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