Changes to the Forums (Pages and Stats)


 
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The Lounge What is on Your Mind? Changes to the Forums (Pages and Stats)
# 1  
Old 12-01-2018
Changes to the Forums (Pages and Stats)

Hey.

So... here are the changes.

1. The current home page of the forum is now based on a algo (below) which shows a thread based on this SQL

Code:
$select_limit = 1; 
$reply_count = 3; 
$thread_array = array(); 
$forum_id = 30;  //shell programming 
$query = 'SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid = ' . 
$forum_id .' AND visible=1 AND replycount > ' . 
    $reply_count . ' ORDER BY threadid DESC LIMIT ' . $select_limit; 
$latest_thread = $db->query_first_slave($query); 
$featured_threadid= $latest_thread['threadid'];

In other words, the home page shows one of the latest threads from the Shell Programming and Scripting forum that has a reply count of greater than 3. I will add some more logic to this later.


2. The original home page is now accessible from the navbar on each page and is called "Forum" or "Forums"

Code:
https://www.unix.com/forum.php

In the future, after I fix some links anchors, I will change the above link to:

Code:
https://www.unix.com/forum/

3. The stats which were at the top of the forums, are now included at the top of each search page results. This means if you view "Thanked Posts" or "Today's Posts" or "Newest Posts" or even do a keyword search, you will get the same results as before but the status will appear at the top.

The reason for this change is as follows:

The Advanced Stats on the home page caused SEO engines and analyzers to complain that there are too many links, so we need to move this off the home page. So, I moved it to the top of each search result page for now.

Also, the old home page was is very static (without the stats) so I moved that page off the home page (but make it available as /forum) and then made the home page more dynamic showing the latest busy thread.

That's about it... except for some minor changes to the editors which I will explain in another post.
# 2  
Old 12-01-2018
Also, since I changed the original home page to forum.php ... it might be less confusing to long time users if I put the stats back on that page and remove the status from the search results pages.

That might be too many changes in one weekend for long time users to get used to. Smilie
# 3  
Old 12-01-2018
OK.. that is what I did just now.

I moved the "Advanced Stats" back to the top of the forum page (the original home page), since the forum (the original home page) is not the home page any more.

This will be less confusing to long time members.

Cheers.
# 4  
Old 12-02-2018
Update:

MySQL query for homepage featured thread is now:

Code:
SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid IN (160,30) AND visible=1 AND replycount > 3 ORDER BY lastpost DESC LIMIT 1

where forumid 160 is the beginners forum and forumid 30 is the shell scripting forum. I will likely add more forum ids to this query in the near future.

I may also use a random number and select the forum or even the order of the query based on one or more random numbers; but for now I'm going to order by lastpost and select from an array of forumids. The reason for this is I want the most recent thread with an updated post, from the array of forumid shown the home page.

Also, I plan to add some VueJS reactive code with some new features, later this year or early in 2019, to the home page. As always, the "original home page" will be available via a link in the menu bar.

Nothing has changed that much, except I created a new page and made the new page the "home page" and moved the "old forum home page" to the navbar link.

We need a more dynamic, front page and the "stats on the front page" created too many links and these links cause all major search engines to complain which in turn hurts our home page SEO. Plus, when visit the home page, I prefer to see the latest, hottest discussion.

In addition, the 15 similar thread links for dynamically changing discussions on the home page will keep the forum interesting and will keep the links changing for search engines. www.unix.com has moved from #4 to the middle of the third page on Google SERP for keyword unix and I want to see if having more dynamic content on the home page will improve this and get us back the page #1.

Update: Added the forumid of the the solaris forum to the home page featured discussion mix:
Code:
SELECT * FROM thread WHERE forumid IN (160,30,43) AND visible=1 AND replycount > 3 ORDER BY lastpost DESC LIMIT 1

I am also thinking it is good for members to have their posts featured on the home page so directly and prominently. I may increase the replycount limit to > 4 in the future. Let's see.
# 5  
Old 12-02-2018
Update (Results): Well, good news.

Within 24 hours of making this change Google SERP results for keyword search "unix' has moved the site main page (The UNIX and Linux Forums - Free Tech Support) from toward the end of the third page to the middle - bottom of the second page; and climbing.

Let's see if all this work will get up back on the first page (best was around #4 I recall) where we were for 10 years + Smilie
# 6  
Old 12-13-2018
Still in the middle of page two.... not really moving up or down at the moment.... but at least it is not on page three or four like what happened when I changed the home page to a "featured discussion".

Let's see where we are in a week or so.

We did get clobbered a bit the day I changed the mysql fulltext search index to 2 chars versus 3 chars and the site started dropping connections (lots of connections) from the high loads (50+), since the server could not take the 2 char mysql min for the search index and it killed site performance. Now that we are back to 3 chars for the mysql search index and the loads are back to normal, maybe the search gods will look kindly on us sooner than later.
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