What's missing from the forum??

[WLLady]

Please stick around!! And thank you for the comments. So...do i reveal my age when i say i have no clue how to twitter tweet or whatever....lol. i can barely "do" facebook.....lol

[kenya]

Well I think we are already seeing an increase in people you must be doing something right.

[TomK]

So I'm not the only one to notice that....yay!!! :running-chicken:

[treerooted]

I am your perfect example as well: joined but haven't been on much.

Reason? I'm not sure. I belong to two other forums, one of which I post in everyday because it's nice to have that type of "good morning" thread where you can chat with people and see what you're up to. Because you're only looking for technical information some of the time, regulars just want somewhere to chat.
The other one I was sometimes very active and would contribute new content, but have left temporarily as I've been put off by several members views.

I have the potential to be a very active poster or not. Sometimes I may leave for many months then come back and post everyday. Just the way it goes.

So I'm sorry but I don't really have any suggestions for recruitment or retention. Other then anyone in local FB groups could mention this site. It's strength is that it's based on region, so finding local sources and info on birds, feed, equipment. etc etc should be the biggest draw....if you can provide it.

Also, side note, the smilies are disorganized and really annoying if you want to use one, even though they're great.

[WLLady]

i have the same complaint about the smilies....and i'm the one that uploaded them....you should see what it takes to actually GET them into some semblance of organization....sigh. i'll take a look at that again. There's one thing about programmers-i'm not one....ha ha! i would love to get them in a long string across the entire page so there's fewer lines to scroll through. maybe we have too many? hm......

thank you all for your input!
i have tried to post on several facebook poultry places i'm part of and a lot of the groups do not allow posting to other groups....some part of an exclusionary behaviour that i honestly don't get....so i've posted where i can, and been removed from a few groups for trying LOL.
I think @poultry_admin has put up another kijiji posting, and we are getting into hatching/chick time too which we notice tends to increase people trying to find forums....

one thing that we discussed is that the search engines now also index apparently by links between sites, so if you have an article of interest etc, we can actually move up in the searches if you just post the link to the www address in your post. we are not against doing this-sharing information is giving that site credit for the information on it, and will help with the search engine (we also won't kick you off a forum for mentioning another source or forum!!! i never understood that mentality honestly).....

[poultry_admin]

Yup, I have 6 kijiji ads up in Toronto area right now before they shut me down because that is against their rules. They got ~130 views in the 2 weeks they have been up.

The search engine optimization is a very fickle thing. It boils down to two things: Content and ease of finding. Content is determined by readability, length, subject matter, ... all by an algorithm. Findability is what I am working on and is background stuff that you guys won't see. That includes giving these algorithms good maps what to index (and what not to). They are also rating if the info is linked to in other sites (super important, but not in our control) and links to other sites (-> link lots!!!). Pages that are better in creating this link spiderweb are higher in search results.

So wherever you guys can spread a link to www.pto.ca, please do! There is only so much 4 admins can do. This needs the masses.

[Skinny rooster]

I don't know if it helps to give admin ideas on how to get people but maybe just say how you found this site. I of course transferred from the old site ( forgot what it used to be called) but the way I heard of the original was, I happened to be at an auction and a young man was handing out cards with the logo and site address. The rest is history.

[muffin57]

I put an ad on Kijiji Thunder Bay yesterday using our logo, so hopefully we'll see more people from here. I did get a reply. I know a lot of people are on fb, but there are some people like me that are not and may prefer a smaller forum like this one.

[windwalkingwolf]

What if picture files were named, would that help visibility in web image searches? For instance, if I was googling pictures of Sumatra chickens, would results from PTO pop up if someone had named their uploaded file "Sumatra 1" instead of "09823DSC" or whatever?

[labradors]

I found PTO after it was mentioned on Backyard Chickens.

Linda