we can move this one to the temple later, but I'd like it to get everyone's attention for right now.

I think we can leave the old boards alone after changing our signatures, and not worry about newbies finding us.

the threads Doors made will be fairly obvious for a while, and if we change all our signatures, any old thread that gets bumped will have the links to the new boards. i DON'T think we need to "test" our new signatures over there.

I've also heard some people are surprised or concerned about the trolls staying on the Harper Collins site. Frankly, I expected that and thought it was understood that they would. They've "won", and will enjoy their victory dances. I think the new poster on the stamps forum is simply one of them trying to create new conflict. It won't work, we've got moderators on both sites and both sites know how to behave.

This means WE have won.

Let the trolls dance, we can ignore them.

Still, I'd like to hear from anyone who thinks we need to monitor the old site. I'm warry of continually advertising these boards in an active way, but I think the signatures are passive and unobtrusive. I don't think that PM'ing newbies on the harper collins site is good or bad... some of them may be troll accounts used to see if we're still checking the boards there, but that's only a minor risk.

after all, what can they actually DO to us now?

I agree that changing our signatures should be enough, I don't see why they (the trolls) would want to bother trying to do anything to us seeing as we have left them to it; and, although they can do little over here to bother us, I'd rather not give them any reasons to want to try and do anything in the first place - i.e. making any more posts about the fact that we've moved.

oh, when they get bored enough, they'll come over here. be sure of it.

they'll enjoy trying to fit in and looking like ordinary posters then slowly causing more and more trouble until they can cause the appearance of us fighting with each other.

the problem is, in that respect they'll be utterly indistinguishable from genuinely new people who just happen to get more annoying as time goes on.

Done my sig there

It's: We've moved to Here[link]. It's Like Narina but with less goat people.



Let forget what the trolls say. Without us they've got nothing to do.

One of them posted (in the old Boards) that they hate the people, not the place, and that it was a silly thing of us to leave.
So.
Still, it was morbid to see Jugghead talking to himself for the last 24 hours, were normally the place was buzzing. What did they expect, cheering crowds along the road?
Those who check the old place and stumble across a lost soul might pm them or not. I too think that we did enough advertising for this place for now.
It needs to build, and that's were the spotlight should be now. We will attract the more people the fuller this board is. I'm sure we'll be doing well.

I think the signatures will be enough, our old posts on the old boards will come up in search results for all sorts of stuff and lead people straight to them - that's why the more of us that fix our signatures the better.

I personally am also working hard to get links to this site on other sites; there are currently 7666 links pointing to here, we're not properly in Google yet though so that will rise when that happens, but it is going up every day with link swapping and such.

To put it in perspective though, the HP website has 141011 links pointing to it in the major search engines - so I still have a long way to go with this, every little helps.

On the bright side though, the stamp place has only 436 links pointing to it at the moment.

Also I've Googlified (for want of a better word) this site so that all of the urls are search engine friendly, which means all the pages will eventually come up in search results a lot quicker than they otherwise would. I don't want to start harping on about search engine optimization stuff here but, suffice to say, we will eventually be high up in any Terry Pratchett and Discworld related searches.

I can let people know how we're doing as we go along if anyone's interested in this stuff?

Yeah, how in simple finger puppet terms does it work, If someone put terry pratchett message board in to google how would they find us?

Also, is the there anything we can do to help you?

[i:a20ccb12d8]EDIT: to make sense.[/i:a20ccb12d8]

I agree with Garner's post. I don't think we need to continually bump the place, it'll be a bit too much like spamming for my liking.

And on googlifying (soon to be a word in the Oxford English dictionary no doubt) are there any tips you can give us on assisting you Mal?

edit: gah! Freya beat me to it, I blame Snails for infecting me with slowness

I would post a link in my sig but I have no idea how to manage it. I know... I'm ashamed.

I've linked to this place from a couple of other places, not much but better than nothing, right?

Off the top of my head:

[code:1:f4c4dbd20f] here [/code:1:f4c4dbd20f]
It's easy mmm'kay!

[quote:c71c9a3550="Mynona"]I would post a link in my sig but I have no idea how to manage it. I know... I'm ashamed.

I've linked to this place from a couple of other places, not much but better than nothing, right?[/quote:c71c9a3550]

You don't need to use UBB code, you can just type the url, like www.terrypratchettbooks.org

While I don't think we want a standardized signature, i think we ought to be pretty clear, and of one voice, in what the sigs say.

"We have moved to www.terrypratchettbooks.org" would be sufficient.

anything that gets that message across would be sufficient, though.

Mal, I'd like to hear how it's going - in which forum would that be found? Somewhere in the Temple? Or here?
Also, like Frey, I'd like to know what we can do. Would it help if we went on this site via google? Does that pull one to the top?

Maybe the best thing we all can do is filling this place with intelligent posts. When I'm back home, I will start a rereading round! There are still zillions of Pratchett related questions I never came to ask, believe it or not. Well. most of them are due to my lack of knowledge of the English language, but still.

Ah, and the Jugghead is still talking to itself on the old site... :?

I wouldn't get too obssessed with it, just being here adding content is the best thing we can all do really. If you have a website you can put links on that, it's better if the link (anchor) text actually says Terry Pratchett or Discworld etc somewhere in it, but every link is good.

I have the link on the bottom of every page on Maljonic's Dreams, about a thousand or so, and four other websites also have the link on every page - including Marcia's Planet Surveyor.

I've also been trying to develop this page: http://www.terrypratchettbooks.org/discworld/
but it's gone on hold a bit with sorting everything out now that we've moved here. If anyone wants to write a couple of the remaining book descriptions that would help. I made the page because people kept coming on the old boards and asking the same question that that page answers, so I figured some people might search for 'discword book order', 'discword books in chronological order' etc, and thought it a good idea to make a page based on that premise.

The first couple of descriptions could do with a bit more adding too, I've made it look like they're a bit crap by not writing enough on them.

If anyone is going to write something though, make sure you use your own words - this can mean rewriting stuff you've read somewhere else, just make sure you don't copy and paste it so we get unique search results for that page.

Tephlon is having a go at some little symbols for the page to go with each group of books, watch, witch, wizard etc, which wont increase search results as such, but will make the page more useful, nicer to look at and, therefore, more likely to be linked to on other message boards and such for instance.

I was also thinking of making some other pages as offshoots from that same page, the only thing I've thought of so far is a Terry Pratchett biography, collecting information from many different sources then writing a page about him using all the info with unique rewritten text - more stuff to relate this site to Terry Pratchett and the Discworld really, and things we can use to point visitors to when they ask often repeated questions.