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What's In This Issue?

• 1.0  Community Central - Adlandpro Honors Special Member - [ View Article ]
• 1.1  New Community Features - Forum Cleanup - [ View Article ]
• 1.2  On The Community Horizon - , ALP Buddy, Paid Membership- [ View Article ]
• 2.0  Feature Article - Comment Spam - [ View Article ]
• 3.0  Featured Forum Reviews - [ View Article ]
• 4.0  Community Feedback - We want to hear from you! - [ View Article ]

_{1.0  Community Central}

Adlandpro Recognizes Special Dedicated Member

Each week, one person is chosen as the Adlandpro Community Person of the Week.   A special member who is recognized by his/her peers as being an exemplary member of the community.  The new program has been an ongoing success and has already awarded 16

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Halloween Contest Winners

The Ghost Story contest from last issue turned out to be pretty successful.  For those of you who did not get a chance to see it yet, even though the contest is over, I'd still like to continue the campfire and hear more of your "freaky stories".  Click here to go to the campfire

In the end, we had a few posts but one in particular really got my attention.  Donna Lira's little stunt (as cruel as it was) with her submission of the Ghost Car Commercial nearly sent me out of my seat.  *Ahem* yes, well I'm sure I just had a little too much coffee that day so that's why I was so jumpy but that's neither here nor there.

Donna takes the 500 ad display prize for the winning entry into the Ghost Story Contest.  Thanks to everyone who submitted a story.  Some of them were quite freaky indeed. 

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_{1.1  New Community Features}

The Garbage Man Cometh

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm happy to announce that we've made a very big change to the community for the better.  You'll now find that the forums will be much easier to navigate because there's "less clutter in the aisles" so to speak.

When the community was still small, old abandoned forums weren't a large enough issue to have to worry about at the time and allocate resources to addressing.  Now that our numbers are well over 21,000 members and growing rapidly, this type of clutter has become a serious problem standing in the way of members locating information quickly and easily.  Not to mention that single-post and inactive forums degrade the image of the community as a whole and that's not good for any of us and our businesses.

To answer these needs, we have introduced a process which acts like a garbage collector in a way.  This process will, on a nightly basis, flag certain forums for removal based on certain criteria and notify forum owners of the reason for flagging and deletion and perform previously scheduled forum deletions as well as any actions necessary at this point on their part.  Current criteria for forum removal includes:

• Forums which have only 1 post and have been active for at least 30 days.
• Forums which have not had any posts added to it for over 30 days.  (Forum will be archived, not deleted)
• Forums which remain empty for 30 days or more. 

The goal here is to clean up single-post forums and expose busier and more active forums to everyone as well as encourage those who create forums to take a more active role in the success of their forums.  Sorry guys, forum squatting is no longer allowed.

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_{1.2  On the Community Horizon...}

Premium Community Membership Nearing Completion

A few issues ago, we had mentioned that Adlandpro will be introducing a paid member upgrade option to Adlandpro Community.  With that project nearing completion and most of the development almost done, I wanted to check in with you guys and get your feedback as to what you would like to see added to the Premium Membership which would give you a good reason to spend the extra couple of bucks to upgrade.

Currently, once the Premium Membership launches, several features of the free service on the community will be scaled back some to provide more value and incentive to upgrade to the Premium membership.   More rigid details will be released as begin finalizing the finished product. 

In the meantime however, like I mentioned earlier we'd like to take your feedback on things you would like to see added to the Premium Membership through this forum. 

http://community.adlandpro.com/forumShowPost.aspx?PostID=191437

We'd appreciate any comments you leave which will help Bogdan create an exciting new package for you. 

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The Adlandpro Buddy System

How many of you can relate?  You first get onto an online community and you look at your buddy list and it says 0, zero, nil, nada, bupkus, squat.  Not a friend in sight.  You join a couple of discussions, maybe a chat room here or there and type a few words.  The odd person acknowledges your message and maybe thanks you for it.  Sometimes we luck out and get into a conversation which we can actively participate in where participants are genuinely interested in what you have to say.  From that you miraculously manage to get a few friends onto your buddy list out of the deal.  Not bad for 2 full nights work at the computer. 

What usually happens though is that you close the community, wonder why you were ever dragged to it in the first place, lament the decision to have given away your email address so easily, and then hit the unsubscribe button when the first email comes welcoming you to the party hoping you'll never see another one. 

The Adlandpro Buddy System is designed to eliminate that feeling and get people connected right away.  Make new members feel like they have somewhere to go and someone to talk to as soon as they come through the doors.  The goal here is to give new users not just a reason to check us out but a HUGE reason to stay as well.  Here's how it will work:

1. You register to become a "Buddy" by agreeing to the terms and conditions of the program and filling out the registration form.  (Users with a large number of poor ratings on their statistics panel are not eligible for the program)
    
2. While you are online at Adlandpro Community, keep your eyes on your email box for an Assigned Buddy Notification.  You must be online to be assigned an Adlandpro Buddy.
    
3. If you receive a notification, it will tell you who the new user is and provide a link to their profile so you can send them a message directly.  You can then be the very first to contact this new user and give them a hand getting to know the ropes of Adlandpro Community. 
    
4. For a period of 7 days following their joining the community your name will be displayed at the top of the new user's page with a hyperlink to contact you directly through your Adlandpro Inbox.  You need not be online but it helps. 
    
5. For those of you with a competitive edge and really know your way around Adlandpro, you can earn Buddy Points which can be used towards the upcoming Monthly Member Plus Community Membership*.  The person with the highest number of buddy points at the end of the year will take the Buddy of the Year award and will receive a free full year of the Premium Community Membership.  

This is a work in progress but what you see is the initial proposed structure of the program.  Send us your feedback through this forum. 

http://community.adlandpro.com/forumShowPost.aspx?PostID=191442

We'd like to hear from you about this or any other subject presented in Adlandpro. 

*Awarded Buddy Points subject to a positive review of the buddy by the new user

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Community Tip: Your Forum Signature

Many have asked me exactly how to edit or create their forum signatures.  The answer is pretty simple.  Go to this link:

http://community.adlandpro.com/editprofile.aspx

and about halfway down the page you will see the "signature" text area.  Insert your signature there.  For those of you who have some HTML "Skillz" you may want to add some fancy hyperlinks or images in there.  Consider putting the code above into your signature.    The sky's the limit.  Go NUTS!

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Have you had a positive experience using Adlandpro or the Adlandpro Community?
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_{2.0  Feature Article}

Have an Article You Want To Submit?  Send It To Me and if I use it on one of our newsletters, I'll put your profile here. 

What is comment spam?*
Copyright 2005 By Trina L.C. Schiller


*Comment spam* is the posting, either manually or auto style, of
advertisements, or plain old nonsense, to blogs for the sole purpose of
getting a trackback link.

*Comment spam* is not just annoying to blog publishers, but it is an
irritant to search engines as well. While publishers are having to fight
these parasitic spammers, by deleting their bogus comments, the search
engines are needing to fight this content pollution in an effort to best
serve their users. Search engines are in the business of providing
information, not pages of endless crap.

The benefit to the sleeze-ball who is a *comment spammer* is simple...
The more *blogs* that they can get their links on the higher and faster
they can rank on Alexa and Google, Yahoo and MSN. They use someone
else's legitimate content to create links back to their own stuff, and
as we all know, the more people linking back to you, the better you look
to the search engines. And, of course, *blogs* are the perfect system
for this type of abuse because with each update,they ping and tell the
bots to come have a look.

In an effort to help publishers and themselves, Google, Yahoo and MSN
have encouraged publishers to use the no follow tag (rel="nofollow") for
*comment links*. This tag tells the bots that the link is not to be
spidered, defeating the purpose of putting it there in the first place.
 

Testimonials

I am very impressed with the way you perform your business. I can see why the community is growing and so many people have become great friends. I have only been in the community for a short while, but I look forward to being here for a long while. It is a great place to share ideas and help people improve their personal development. Once again, thanks for putting together such a fantastic community, and look forward to getting together in Winnipeg. Dave Young

This is a very nice solution for sleeze-ball trackbacks, but it still
leaves the *blog publishers* with editing to do. Let's face it, *comment
spam* looks ugly on site; therefore it must be removed. So, the no
follow tag is only a partial solution to the problem.

Although there are not a great many tools for publishers to use to fight
*comment spam*, there are a few to be had. If you happen to use an MT
(movable type) system for your *blog*, you may find this site useful:
http://www.blogspam.org/website.html
 
Some *blog sites*, like blogger, are encouraging publishers to use
turring keys. This requires that a poster physically type in a code in
order to post. If you remember, safe lists started using turring keys
when safe list submitters arrived on the scene. This works fairly well
at blocking autosubmitted *blog spam*, but does nothing to stop *manual
spamming*.Again, the fix is not complete.

*What can be done to fight comment spam?* Aside from the afore mentioned
tactics, not much. Google has come up with something, /Google Blog
Search/, but I don't think it will be very popular in the long term. On
the surface it will be a good thing, it will allow static webmasters to
stop having to compete with blogmasters, but in reality, isolation is
never a good thing.


About the Author

Trina L.C. Schiller
Publisher - The Trii-Zine Ezine
Internet marketing resources and information without the geek-speak!
http://www.ezines1.com
http://www.ezines1.com/triizine
triizine@ezines1.com
 

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Have you had a positive experience using Adlandpro or the Adlandpro Community?
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_{3.0  Featured Forum Reviews}

These forums have been hand-selected as top forums on the Community as a result of their activity, topic, number of participating members, number of posts etc.  They're definitely worth the look and a good starting point if you've never been to the forums before.  Check them out!

Do you have a forum you think should be featured here? [ Let us know! ]

Our computers require us to be diligent.  We can not continually use and use them and expect them to keep going. So this forum is to help us keep them clean and working efficiently.

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_{4.0  Community Feedback}

Your opinions as members of the community are extremely important to us.  We would like to hear from  you.  Your opinions, suggestions, and kudos are welcome.

To submit your feedback click here

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The Adlandpro Community.  Bringing People and Business Owners Together.

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Winnipeg, Manitoba
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Canada
Phone: (204)254-7228
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Comments & Questions: http://www.adlandpro.com/ContactForm.asp