Homepage Offiline

[Scott Greczkowski]

Our regular SatelliteGuys Homepage will be offline for approximately 2 weeks as we conduct some testing. During this testing period you got to www.satelliteguys.us you will now be taken to our main forums listing page. It is unknow if the homepage will return.

For those of you wondering why here is the boring story.

A little over a month ago our traffic and ad revenue to SatelliteGuys dropped like a rock. I couldn't figure out why...
Then another vBulletin forum owner contacted me and asked if my traffic and ad revenue dropped, well in talking with him we both dropped on the same day.
Then we starting finding other vBulletin owners who had the same issue... and we all put our heads together wondering what happened and why... and well the only thing we really had in common besides running vBulletin is that we used the same homepage generation software vba cms. One of the sites turned off his homepage and after a few days his numbers started going back up again. The general feeling now is the vBulletin bots do not like something about the homepage and penalized the sites using it. The amount of people coming here from search engines has dropped greatly since this happened.

Since we don't have anything to lose so I am giving it a shot.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

[mike123abc]

Good old vBulletin and their buggy software strikes again!

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Good old vBulletin and their buggy software strikes again!

Nope not this time... that homepage is actually not part of vBulletin, It was written by someone else.

It has been good to us over the years.. but if this is what's causing the dip in things then it has to go. But I won't know for sure until I test things.

 

[lakebum431]

I hope there is a way to bring back the homepage, but not to the detriment of the site. Good luck with the "test"

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I hope there is a way to bring back the homepage, but not to the detriment of the site. Good luck with the "test"

Me too. I like using it to post news.

 

[Rey]

Do what you gotta do sir.

 

[TheKrell]

Dump vba cms! Cut out all the cruft and generate the homepage yourself. IMHO the vBulletin bots shouldn't be offended by a streamlined, fast-loading, hand-edited home page.

 

[Hall]

I hope there is a way to bring back the homepage, but not to the detriment of the site. Good luck with the "test"

Me too. I like using it to post news.

Leave the entry page as http://www.satelliteguys.us/forum.php but either add a "news" link at the top that takes people to what used to be the homepage. You could even use the "Home" link above and the "Forum" link will still take you to the forum.php page.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Leave the entry page as http://www.satelliteguys.us/forum.php but either add a "news" link at the top that takes people to what used to be the homepage. You could even use the "Home" link above and the "Forum" link will still take you to the forum.php page.

Not a bad idea, although I am concerned in doing that Google may index it and continue penalizing us for it.

 

[Tampa8]

Really need somewhere that has the former right hand column of most recent posts.

 

[navychop]

That WOULD be nice.


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[mike123abc]

I wonder if it is because the front page had too many ads on it if you were not logged in?

 

[KE4EST]

Leave the entry page as http://www.satelliteguys.us/forum.php but either add a "news" link at the top that takes people to what used to be the homepage. You could even use the "Home" link above and the "Forum" link will still take you to the forum.php page.

I say go ahead and do this. Since we are already low, then watch a few days and see if we start climbing. If no change in a couple days, drop it.

 

[TheKrell]

Not a bad idea, although I am concerned in doing that Google may index it and continue penalizing us for it.

Right. This is why I still say,

Dump vba cms.

 

[Hall]

Is Google showing preference to having the entry page the forum main page or does it have something against vba cms? Or, you don't know (yet)?

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk

 

[Mr Tony]

wondered why it kicked me to the forum page...now I know

 

[Frank Jr.]

Most sites I visit have a home/welcome page that at the very least describes it's purpose, it's goals and navigation tools. I have no clue as to why revenue that was generated by the home page has recently dropped, but somewhere there should be a welcome page for first time visitors.

 

[Frank Jr.]

I figured it out, this is why there is no homepage............

 

[Ramy]

How do I go to the usercp to see new posts to threads I subscribe to?

 

[Hall]

How do I go to the usercp to see new posts to threads I subscribe to?

This, Settings, upper-right corner, has always worked.