bbPress  – a  streamlined, fast, and easy-to-use forum program, it integrates easily into WordPress.

We’re now offering one-click installs of bbPress. Using as a message board, it’s a great way to promote visitor interaction and also to discover what your visitors are interested in, who they are, and what else they want to see from your site.

bbPress is open source and focused on speed and security, meaning you don’t have to worry about slow loading pages or the risk of being hacked. The streamlined software is also lightweight and efficient for better use of space and bandwidth. bbPress is easy to install thanks to our one-click install solution, and the user-friendly control panel also means less work for admins and moderators once you’re up and running.

bbPress enjoys many similar customisation elements to WordPress so you can develop and install themes and plugins (e.g. for ratings, video and private forums) to customise your forums. Furthermore, bbPress can be integrated with WordPress so it has access to your blog’s functionality and users signing up to your message boards can also be users on your blog. This is especially useful for multi-author blogs, blogs with regular commenters and those looking to build up integrated site communities from an existing WordPress blog.

If you have a Premium hosting plan, you can now install bbPress just like any other one-click install. Go to your eXtend control panel, scroll down to one-click installs and install from there.

To find out more about what bbPress has to offer, check out bbpress.org.

Often described as one big process, good search engine optimization involves a number of different steps.  The intricacies of these steps is what leads many website owners to hire professional SEO firms that claim to have the magic formula. Going it alone could seem very daunting and unrewarding even after months of hard work. If you truly want to get the most out of search engine optimization, the following mistakes must be avoided at all costs.

Watch Out for SEO Gurantee Scams

The web waters are infested with companies looking to bank off the prevalence of SEO.  These firms often guarantee services that will put you on the first page of Google in the number one spot.  What you should know is that no company can guarantee such rankings.  The fact that most of the top ranked sites report to having no dealings with SEO firms should be enough for you not to rely on such claims.

Cloaking

The term cloaking refers to a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user’s browser.

While this may seem like a viable strategy, cloaking should be avoided if you want to remain on favorable terms with the search engines.  It might have worked a few years ago, but today’s search engine’s are sophisticated enough to detect this and other unethical forms of SEO.

Multiple Search Engine Submissions

Contrary to popular belief, submitting your website to search engines regularly can be a mistake.  There are some companies that offer services utilizing special software that will automatically submit your site on a regular basis.  Don’t buy into this as it can actually get you penalized and hinder your efforts.

Don’t Overuse Flash and Rich Graphics

If at all possible, Flash is a technology you want to do without.  Though nice from a visual aspect, Flash can leave your site heavy and difficult to process, making it nearly impossible for search engine spiders to interpret.  The best technologies are integrated with HTML as this the language embraced by all search engines. Whenever you put important information in a graphic form make sure to have it a text version of it for the search engines to index.

Moving Too Fast

SEO is an ongoing process., not something you can do just once and put to the side.  Reaching a top search engine position in two days or even two weeks is virtually impossible.  So, even though an SEO firm may claim to get you there in a short amount of time, stay away from the these bogus claims and keep your money. Generally speaking, some changes can take less than a week to take effect, while many take 3-6 months or more for measurable changes to be observed.

These are the basic no-go principles of SEO. If you follow these simple guidelines you’ll save yourself from a lot of trouble and unnecessary expenses.

When I first got into online marketing many months ago, my main focus was on paid search (Google AdWords et al)  creating campaigns, bids, clicks, conversions etc however, although it wasn’t part of my job, I found SEO equally as interesting and wanted to learn more. Without any on the job experiences to learn from I went looking online for websites that would help me and found many interesting sites.

Whether you are a complete novice or you an SEO master, these sites have enough of a back catalogue and regular new information to keep you going for months!

• http://www.seomoz.org/blog: Starting as an SEO agency they have used their blog to position themselves as a global resource for the industry

• http://www.seobook.com/blog: A mix of practical advice, industry news and personal opinion

• http://searchengineland.com/columns/: one of my favourite sites, the columns section covers all aspects of search marketing

• http://searchenginewatch.com/sew_archive_experts&type=sew_experts/sem-101&issue=2009: Really good introductory articles to various aspects of online marketing

• http://www.wolf-howl.com: This site has been around for years and it mixes advice with commentary and personal opinion

• http://econsultancy.com/blog: The volume of posts each day can be a bit too much and some articles don’t go in to a lot of detail, but the percentage that do hit the money make it worth it.

• http://www.toprankblog.com/: Good traditional ‘how to’ blog with some great advice for all levels of knowledge

These are the sites that I relied on to get me up to speed and the ones I still read each week, and I’m sure many have your own, so if you’d like to share them leave a comment and link below…

P.S. For a great list of online marketing sites check our AdAge’s Power 150

What is ‘double opt-in’?

Using the single opt-in method people simply submit an email address to your website to be added to your list. The problem with this method is that people might submit their details incorrectly (creating a dirty database for you) or someone may have submitted their name for them without their knowledge (in effect turning you in to spam).

With double opt-in the submitted details are not blindly added to your mailing list. An email is sent to the account asking the owner to confirm that the email address is valid and they want it to be added to your list. If you do not get a response then the email address will not be included next time you send out an email. The name is only added to your distribution list if the account owner replies to your confirmation request email.

How to use it?

If you manually add a new email address to your list then everything will work the same as before. However if a person requests to be added to your mailing list through your website’s sign up form then they will be sent an email asking them to confirm that they wish their email address to be added to your list.

You will now see a list of confirmed users and a second list of unconfirmed users (i.e. they have entered their address, but not clicked on the link in the email). Your Emails sent through the mailing list script will only be sent to confirmed users. This change applies to all web hosting customers.

Why have we made this change?

Double opt-in is the Email marketing industry’s best practice method of building and maintaining subscription lists. It helps to cut down on the amount of unsolicited Emails being sent and received and ensures your brand does not become associated with spam through no fault of your own. It also stops our servers being blacklisted for sending unsolicited email, it is vital that servers stay clear of blacklists as it stops you receiving form results submitted on your website (for example).

The new opt-in system will be effective from Monday 4th of May.

Email marketing links:

* Business Link’s guide to using email marketing
* Mailchimp’s guide to designing and coding HTML email (PDF)