Creating and running a discussion forum

[temi]

But do you get a UK IP address or a US IP address?

Originally Posted by gibby

Im no expert but I have found a great web hosting co that have support in the UK but have all the hosting in the US
pcs-net.co.uk
have been great with me as I knew very little about forums and they even restored everything for free when it got hacked

they are very cheap and the email support is 24 hrs
usually I get a reply back in a few mins when I have questions.

I dont pay much at all for the hosting and the £9.99 package got me started and I think I pay £25 a year now as we ahve alot of stuff on our webspace

let me know what you think

Gibby

[gibby]

thats a great question, they used to have severs in the UK but moved everything to the us as its far cheaper and the bandwith quota was better

does it make any difference?

I will ask

Gibby

[temi]

Well to some extend it does to your ranking. There is this think called Geo IP that most serch engines us. So if your site is hosted on a US IP address they assume its a US site and it will not rank well for UK keywords, if its hosted on a UK IP address its assumed to be a UK website and it will rank well for UK related keywords.

[gibby]

got this reply

Our hosting platform is currently located across 3 datacentres in the US. Our choice for this is because these are some of the biggest datacentre platforms in the world and offer connections and redundancy far greater than any UK datacentre can provide. Also, with UK to US connections being so large nowdays, this makes very little difference to performance at all. Our management are also currently investigating the feasability of extending this platform to our own data suites in the UK as well if a UK location is specifically required.

-----------------
we are aiming for our biz to be more european than UK and also getting alot of interest from the US
so I suppose we cant win eaither way
but pcs have been fantastic with help - far more than I ever expected

Gibby

[temi]

Professional SEO will tell you that you need to be in the UK if your primary targed it the UK or European market.

[opeth]

I had a forum, good information!

[Ping]

I am running an "informative" forum, but traffic is still real S-L-O-W!

Hope to get nice suggestions and inputs from here.

[Meti]

Originally Posted by Ping

I am running an "informative" forum, but traffic is still real S-L-O-W!

Hope to get nice suggestions and inputs from here.

Problem is maybe you're being too informative, and that maybe doesn't encourage a user to respond to any discussions?

That is why you should open threads, with a few questions pointing to the public, this makes other users involved in the discussions, as they try and help out.

If you simply have threads with lots of information, and no real questions there, why should they bother to reply?

Common mistake many forum owners do in the early stages, I think the best way is to find a balance, between informative and threads dedicated to questions etc.

- Meti

[Ping]

I hope my site is that informative yet, but getting there.

Well, it is supposed to let forum posters to post their personal favorite idiomatic expressions, so that the it can help build up the library of idioms.

[prakharmaheshwari05]

thanx for the advices..