Working at Home on the Internet » Forums

A Sneak Peek of the Baby Boomers US Forum/Blog

Joe Hauckes — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:08:59 +0000

As I mentioned in the Weekend Wrap-up Video this past week, I have been working on getting the Baby Boomers Forum/Blog ready to launch in the near future.

I have the Blog under the Maintainence plugin, but I can give you a sneak peek at the Forum if you’d like.

Click the screenshot to see what the Forum looks like so far.

As I said, neither is done, (I haven’t even started on the individual forum/posts yet) but I wanted to give you an idea of what look I am aiming for.

Waddya think?

BTW, feel free to offer suggestions for Forum Topics and if you would like to Register before the official launch, please do.

Thanks

Joe

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WAHI Weekend Wrap-up XXV

Joe Hauckes — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:14:45 +0000

Over last weekend, I came up with the idea to start a Forum & Blog to discuss all things Baby Boomer related. I wanted babyboomers.com but as you would guess it was already taken. The .com was taken by a website that is just there with some pages, no activity. .org was just being sat upon by GoDaddy as was .net.

I found the same sitters (GD) on babyboomersus.com & .org but .net was open. So I bought it.
The plan is to set up a site that is both informative (the blog) and a place for us Baby Boomers to discuss whatever interests the group.

I ran it past quite a few friends and they all thought it was a great idea so I decided to go for it.

I have complimentary templates for both and am just starting to get things set up on the back end the way I think will work.

Now, I have to come up with discussion topics for the forum and some posts for the blog & get ready for the big opening day. I just have no idea yet how long this isgoing to take.

I’m aiming for August 1st. This should give me time enough to work out all the kinks and get some writing done that will at least picque peoples interest.

What do you think? Good idea? Are you game to join in?

For those of you reading in RSS or an e=mail subscription, please click here to view the video.

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

Joe Hauckes — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 11:17:09 +0000

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.

[tags]Forum,Work at Home,Plugin,WordPress,RS-Discuss[/tags]

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Try, Try, Try Again

Joe Hauckes — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 10:57:54 +0000

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.

[tags]XDForums,RS Discuss,WordPress,plugins,forums,Working at Home on the Internet, Joe’s Freeware Finds[/tags]

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Closing the Working at Home Forum

Joe Hauckes — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 16:47:51 +0000

Â Well the coin has finally landed… and it came up Tails.Â 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 IÂ went to monitor new posts (multiple times a day). That was just the ones that got through the original sign-up process.

I then triedÂ 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 onlyÂ 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.

Should I Close the Working at Home Forum?Â

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