Working at Home on the Internet

The World Premier of the Working at Home on the Internet Forum (take 2)

There He Goes Again

Let me explain a little about my reasoning behind restarting the Forum in this format on the Blog.

 When I first started the Working at Home on the Internet Blog way back in October of 2005, my main objective was to present good, workable, dependable and relevant information to people trying to run a Home Business on the Internet.

Since I was just starting out, the premise was a little different… take my readers on the journey with me. I read other Blogs that were all about blogging, business, entrepreneurship, whatever I could find on the subject of Working at Home. The problem was, even though I was getting Great Information, getting answers to questions I had about anything except the subject of that particular post was really difficult.

 I had to keep searching for something, anything that related to my questions. I had questions about scams, spams, real job opportunities, fake job opportunities, SEO, Domains, advertising, and just about anything else involved in a Home Business. In order to get these answers for myself and my readers, I redoubled my efforts.

I kept surfing around in circles on the Internet until I landed on a site that offered what I was looking for at the time, The Work At Home Forum. I finally found a place that I could ask questions and get answers. (That’s why the Link has been in my Sidebar since the beginning.)

From then on, I thought that a Forum could fit well with the Working at Home on the Internet philosophy of presenting relevant information to questions people had about starting and running a Home Business. Ok, so now you know why I think that having a Forum for the Genre I am involved in is Important.

 We all know about the fiasco with the phpBB forum I tried with the Webpage, so I won’t go into it now. Suffice it to say, I found something that I think could work well here. A compatible Forum plug-in that could be added to the Blog.

I came across RS Discuss by Rob Sargent. A nice lightweight Forum plug-in for WordPress. The download is what you would expect, a zip file. What was unexpected was I only had to upload 4 folders and 30 files. Total. After the last fiasco, I figured this was worth a 20 minute investment.

This Forum is not a real fancy type with all the bells and whistles. It is fairly basic and since it is based on the blog’s format, it will have some of the same features of navigation. But, it will also have some of the features you would expect of a php based Forum like viewing threads and conversations as well as commenting on the Forum. Registration is fairly easy, but I set it up for user verification through E-mail. Members will be assigned a password (which can be changed after sign-up). This was done to try to alleviate some of the Spam and bogus member sign-ups.

So, Welcome to the World Premier of the Working at Home on the Internet Forum (take 2)

I provided some Categories to start with. It’s up to you to Sign-Up, Ask Questions and Get or Give Answers. And for all my Blogging Friends that want to help out, please register and fill in some of the blanks, there is plenty of them.

Technorati Tags: Forum, Work at Home, Plugin, WordPress, RS-Discuss

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February 1st, 2007 at 06:17am | Posted by Joe | Community, Forums, Plug-ins, Work at Home | 4 reader remarks | Print This Post

Try, Try, Try Again

 Ok. Most, if not all, of you know I have wanted to have a Forum for the Working at Home on the Internet Webpage and Blogs. I think it is a great way to build a community and to share information.

I tried the old phpBB format for Forums. It was a total failure. I got totally fed up with the Spammers, Spam Comments, Bogus members who signed up to Spam and I won’t even mention the porn sites that I had to eliminate from the threads.

 Well, I started looking for something a little easier to handle. Since I use WordPress, I wanted something to incorporate easily with the Blog, manage Spam and still have the versatility of having a Forum.

The first plug-in I tried was a total disaster. XDForums did not work well at all. I had to download a zip file, that part was easy. I had to upload 1200 folders and files to my server. One at a time. That took HOURS. After I had Finally completed the upload, the only thing that seemed to work was that it installed a page for the forum automatically. Nothing else would function. Every time I tried to access the page/forum I would get a 404 error. I spent almost as much time on Their Forum looking for answers as I did uploading files.

I tried installing it on 2 different Blogs, and neither worked. At all. So, I gave up.

Then I started looking again for a different and more compatible plug-in to add a Forum to the Blog.

I came across RS Discuss by Rob Sargent. Interesting, I thought. A nice lightweight Forum plug-in for WordPress. The download is what you would expect, a zip file. What was unexpected was I only had to upload 4 folders and 30 files. Total. After the last fiasco, I figured this was worth a 20 minute investment.

I tested it on the Freeware Finds blog and it worked fine. The only problem I had with the installation on this Blog was that the Theme (Andreas04 2.0) was missing a php file in the header. Once I added the file, it worked well enough to continue with the actual set-up of the various categories and threads for the New Forum.

 This Forum is not a real fancy type with all the bells and whistles. It is fairly basic and since it is based on (WordPress) the blog, it will have some of the same features of navigation. But, it will also have some of the features you would expect of a php based Forum like viewing threads and conversations as well as commenting on the Forum. Registration looks fairly easy, but I set it up for user verification through E-mail. Members will be assigned a password (which can be changed after sign-up). This was done to try to alleviate some of the Spam and bogus member sign-ups.

So far, I like what I see.

I plan on launching the New and Improved Working at Home on the Internet Forum on February 1, 2007. Although the Forum is a work in progress, if you would like to be an “early bird”, go to the coming soon page and register. I can use all the help I can get.

Let me know what you think and Please, offer suggestions. 

Technorati Tags: XDForums, RS Discuss, WordPress, plugins, forums, Working at Home on the Internet, Joe’s Freeware Finds

January 20th, 2007 at 05:57am | Posted by Joe | Forums, Plug-ins, Tools | 2 reader remarks | Print This Post

Closing the Working at Home Forum

 Well the coin has finally landed… and it came up Tails. The Forum must Go.

Due to the fact that Spam and Spammer Members have overwhelmed my Forum, I will be closing it effective 1/1/7.

 

I have gotten almost 700 Spam Posts within 2 weeks, that is about 50 per day, even though the sign-up was set to “human only standards” ie. visual verification and email verification by the potential members. There seem to be an awful lot of people willing to lower their standards and go through the steps of verifying themselves in order to Spam the Forum.

This lead to having to deal not only with the bogus “members” but every bit of Spam they posted. There was up to 10 or more posts each by the time I went to monitor new posts (multiple times a day). That was just the ones that got through the original sign-up process.

 

I then tried using Administrator Approval, but then my Admin email started building up with pending approval mail. This Did Not solve the problem, it just moved it to my mailbox. There is no way to directly approve/disapprove a pending membership. I can only Approve them, then go to the Admin Page to Delete them. This is ridiculous, what’s the point of Administrator Approval if the only thing you can do is approve, not disapprove?

 

I have given up. I don’t have the time or energy to deal with this much aggravation.

 

I may restart the forum sometime in the future, but it seems unlikely unless someone comes up with a better way to handle Spam Posts and Member Sign-up.

As far as I know there is nothing like Akismet for Forums, if you know of anything, let me know.

 

Related:

Should I Close the Working at Home Forum? 

December 28th, 2006 at 11:47am | Posted by Joe | Attitude, Forums, Spam, Work at Home | 4 reader remarks | Print This Post