Wetpaint Central - Recently Updated Pages

Email and Message Board Signatures

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:38:51 CST

Put A Link in Your Email Signature

Placing a banner or link that advertises your wiki in the signature of your outgoing emails is an easy way to market your site.

For example:

Becky Wheaton
Visit my favorite Wetpaint site - www.zombiesurvivalwiki.com

Link on Message Boards the Right Way

Becoming involved in online message boards can draw attention to a personalized, hyperlinked signature. This is a good way to get word out about your site without being accused of "spamming." It would be best to only delve into boards that are related to the topic of your wiki.

How to Promote a Site

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:29:14 CST

Why Get the Word Out? There are many ways to find a site. People find sites through search engines, emails, social networking sites (i.e: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), and word-of-mouth are just a few ways. If you want people to find you site, it is a good idea to use as many avenues as you can to help them without link-farming (putting your site's link on sites that aren't related to your site) or spamming (sending email to people you do not know, promoting your site.)	How to Get the Word Out Here are some great places, both online and offline, to talk about your site with advice and tips on how to do so in a positive way. Social Bookmarking Email and Message Board Signatures Business Cards Promote Using Blogs Link Building Social Networking

Why Get the Word Out?

There are many ways to find a site. People find sites through search engines, emails, social networking sites (i.e: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter), and word-of-mouth are just a few ways. If you want people to find you site, it is a good idea to use as many avenues as you can to help them without link-farming (putting your site's link on sites that aren't related to your site) or spamming (sending email to people you do not know, promoting your site.)

How to Get the Word Out

Here are some great places, both online and offline, to talk about your site with advice and tips on how to do so in a positive way.

Do NOT advertise your site on this page!Posts advertising sites will be deleted.

SEO Tools

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:14:12 CST

Here are some helpful online resources to help you learn about SEO and test SEO results for your site.

This is not an exhaustive list so be sure to add new ones that you find!

Keyword Generation & Research

Tool	Uses
Overture Keyword Selector Tool	Building out keywords, finding other related keywords. See the "keyword selector tool" under the tools menu.
NicheBot	Displays a site's organic rank in Google for specified keywords. Also has tools that help discover and research good keywords.
Google Keyword Tool	Lets you search a keyword, and shows how much people are searching it, and how much pay per click gurus are competing for that certain word! Also, it gives you other words that are similar to your searched keyword.

Site & Page Ranking

Tool	Uses
Alexa Traffic Rankings	Provides traffic and page rank data. See the "traffic rankings" tab. Also offers toolbar downloads that work in Internet Explorer.
SEO Book Plug-in	A FireFox plug-in that provides SEO data for Google & Yahoo's page ranks.
Google Toolbar	Free download that shows ranking of sites as you visit them.
SEOMoz Page Strength Tool	Displays data on 10+ SEO related metrics for a site and uses them to calculate a site's relative SEO strength.

Search Engine Spider Simulators

Tool	Uses
SpannerWorks Spider Simulator	View your site as a search engine spider (or crawler) does.
Search Engine Genie	Lets you know the page size, source code, meta tags, text copy on a page, etc.

Inbound Link Measurement

Tool	Uses
Yahoo Site Explorer	Check your links & your competitors links
Market Leap	Measures the amount of inbound links a for a site within all the major search engines.
Blog Search	Search for mentions of your Wetpaint site in the blogosphere. The more mentions you get here, the higher the traffic!

General SEO Information

Tool	Uses
SeoChat	Information on other SEO tools and latest trends.

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SEO Vocabulary

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:11:17 CST

General SEO Terms

Backlinks: All the links pointing at a particular web page. Also called inbound links.

Crawler (aka "spider"): Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically "crawling" the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot) follows links to web pages. It makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index.

Directories: A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized in about 25 words, and placed in a particular category.

Inbound link: See backlinks, above.

Index: The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query against. Typically, with crawler-based search engines, the index contains copies of all the web pages they have found from crawling the web. With human-powered directories, the index contains the summaries of all web sites that have been categorized.

Keywords: The most popular search terms identified for the subject of your wiki. Many different online tools can help you identify the most effective keywords.

Also See: Keyword Usage.

Organic Listings: Listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings; see below). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

Outbound Links: Links on a particular web page leading to other web pages, whether they are within the same web site or other web sites.

Page title: The name of your site that will appear in the blue browser bar at the very top of every page. This title is the first thing a search engine crawler will read, so it's important to use as many keywords as possible here to describe your site.

Paid Listings (a.k.a. "PPC"): Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or sponsored listings on Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. and are commonly known as PPC (pay-per-click) programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

Position: Refer to Rank.

Rank: How well a particular web page or website is listed in a search engine results page, or SERP is known as "rank" or "position". The rank of a site (e.g. www.wikifido.com) or a particular keyword (e.g. dog rescue) is important for both Organic and Paid Listings. SEO and SEM strategies will be deployed to improve the rank of a site or keyword. However, the rank of a keyword in paid listings can only be affected via SEM, not via SEO.

Robot: See Crawler.

Search Engine: Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. Web search engines generally have paid listings and organic listings. Organic listings typically come from crawling the web, though often human-powered directory listings are also optionally offered.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): The act of marketing a web site via search engines, such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc. The end-result might be to improve rank with organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of the two, along with other search engine-related activities.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The act of altering a website so that it rises higher in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. SEO strategies and tactics are what ultimately garner "free" traffic or drive users to a website, rather than paying for listings via paid listings on Google, Yahoo, etc.

Wetpaint Page Related Terms

Body Text: This the main block of text located in the center of each page on your Wetpaint site. Most page edits and contributions take place here.

Headers: The largest headline style you can use on a Wetpaint Site. Best for main subject headings. Search engine crawlers will look for keywords used in headers.

Keyword Tags: Tags help your users find what will be discussed or conveyed on a particular page. Tags--which are always clickable on Wetpaint sites--are found in two places: in the tag line at the top of every page, and in the tag cloud.

See also Keyword Tags and Top 5 Ways to SEO Your Wiki.

Subheads: The second-largest headline style used on Wetpaint sites. Used to differentiate secondary topics on a page, often in combination with headers. Search engine crawlers look for keywords in subheads.

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Search Engine Optimization

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:05:08 CST

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization is the act of altering a website so that it rises higher in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. Also known as "SEO," this technique is one of the best ways Wetpaint creators and moderators can drive new users and traffic to their sites.

This section provides an overview of important tips and tricks for optimizing your site so it is picked up by the most popular search engines and ranked highly:

Discover the importance of incorporating keywords and tags onto every page.
How to use keyword tags: What every Wetpaint site creator should know!
Learn the best online tools that can help with your SEO efforts.
Brush up on your SEO Vocabulary.

See Also:

Marketing Guide

SEO, Search Engine Optimization Tips and Best Practices,

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:03:38 CST

How to Effectively Network Online Vs. Offline

Online Social networking: Blogs, Feeds, Online Forums, Podcasts, Videos, Games, Chat Rooms, IM, Photo Sharing, Browsers, Bookmark Sharing, Digging Stories, and Posting Stories.

Offline Networking: Finding People of similar interest, Finding Chambers, Organizations, Local Meet ups, Invites, Networking events, conferences, and Seminars.

Online Vs. Offline Social Networking

Online	Offline
Search and earn social networking sites that interests you. There are hundreds of Social networking site blooming everyday.	Look for networking events from your local organizations. There are tons of networks taking place in your city.
Find out if there are members similar to your interests. Research whether the content is interesting to you.	Pick the network event that is right for you and see if the attendees are your target audience or related industry.
Create a profile. Before you creating a profile, make sure that the specific site will meet your goals.	Doing some research will let you know if a specific network will be beneficial for you to join or to attend.
Online	Offline
Introduce yourself within the community. Give a brief introduction of who you are, what you do, and add a picture or an avatar for yourself. It helps you in the Google Universal Search results, and yes use alt tags to tag your picture(s).	Introduce yourself to people. I have seen people in the same group all the time. Mingle with other people. Get introduced to people whom you do not know rather than being with someone you do know. You will be surprised to meet so many people who will have similar interests.
Link your blog, website, and contact information in your profile.	Talk about your Company or Business and exchange business cards in a networking event.
Participate, ask questions, and if you know an answer, or if you can provide additional resources, share it with the group.	Interact! If you are in a conference or meeting, ask questions and share your thoughts! People will remember you.
Online	Offline
Make friends! It is easy to send a request or to add anyone to your friend’s list. Most social media sites have the feature of importing your contacts from any address book you may have. Make as many friends you can within the site.	Join a group in your local community that is of your interest(s).
Create a group of your own interest or for your topic.	If you do not see a topic of interest, create a unique meet up and let everyone know about it. Talk about the topic and invite people to join the group. You can also throw a party or a get together and invite your neighbors, friends, family members, and co-workers. Then share your thought and ideas.
Have great content so that people can visit your entry.	When you meet someone new, talk about something that is of interest that is both appealing and meaningful. Current and updated information is always a topic of interest.
Online	Offline
Give people a reason to stay in your blog and befriend you.	If you talk about an interesting topic, people will love to befriend you and be around you more.
Make it easier for them to find you and add as friend.	Exchange business cards, give your phone number, and extension for others to call you, or give them your email address to get a hold of you.
Link to their blog from your posts. Vote for your friends' posts. If you find interesting posts, vote for it and talk about it to others. Spread the word.	Referral works very well and words from the mouth is still one of the best way to get some business.
Online	Offline
Interact with other members. Comment on interesting posts. Create your own topic to discuss.	Find out possible ways you can help your network and vice versa.
Welcome all of your friends, family, and co workers to join your community.	Share your involvement with friends, family, and others. They might find it interesting as well.
Answer questions. If you are an expert in your field, give answers, suggestions, and advise.	Give expert advise, tips, and share your thought with other networks.

Do you have any thing to add? Create a thread below and tell us what you would want to see added to the list.

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PPC or Organic SEO? Which one should you choose?

Naru2008 — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:32:52 CST

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a process aimed at improving the number of visitors to a website from "natural" or "organic" (with following the guidelines provided by the search engines like Google, MSN, Bing, ect.) search engine listings.

Here are some of the guidelines:

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links.
Offer a site map.
Describe your content (this includes keywords within the site.)
Have a Title
Description and alt tags
Check for correct HTML.

and the list goes on and on.

Pay Per Click campaign on the other hand, is an advertising method used to make your website visible in the top or on the right side of the search engine listings saying 'sponsored results'. You have to bid on the keywords you want your site to be visible and obviously you have to pay the search engines to have your website listed in the results. I was in a conference and even in a lot of seminars, people ask me all the time, "Which one should I choose for my website?" Organic SEO or Pay per Click. Keeping that in mind, I am writing this article. Hope this helps. If you really want to promote your website you should have a combination of SEO, Pay per Click, Offline advertising, Email marketing, directory listing and of course word of mouth as well so that you are not missing anyone. Now If you have some budget and if you like to see immediate results, then Pay per Click is one of the fastest and easiest way to market your website. Why, you ask? Because once you set up the campaign, you can see results in less than a day in most search engines. Another advantage of this is you can test without spending a lot of money and see which gives you the best results and stick to that. So for fast, immediate results, Pay per Click works well.

Lets look at some of the advantages of Organic SEO:

According to some studies and practicality, not all visitors click on the sponsored listing. The reason may be lack of trust. Not everyone trust the sponsored results websites, since a lot of website owners misuse this method.
Even though it might take a while to show up in the organic results, it is worth doing organic SEO. This method is for long term, once your website achieves a place you can maintain.
Everyday, millions of visitors are constantly looking for information and products, so it is important for your website to show up in the result.
Search engines can drive extreme traffic to your website.
If you follow the guidelines, the organic SEO can be done in house without additional cost.(The person should be knowledgeable to do this.)
Visitors value the organic search results more than Pay per Click results.

Lets look at some of the advantages of Sponsored Results:

Immediate results as fast as in a day, and you can see quick results.
Best way to test your marketing campaign.
Easy to set up.
Low budget and you can be in control of your budget. If you like to spend only $10.00 a month, you can still budget it.
You pay only if the visitors click on your website.
Multiple campaigns can be set up to test.
Customized messages can be delivered.
With a little bit of creativity and marketing pitches, you can drive a lot of traffic to your site.

These are some of the advantages. It is up to you to choose which one suits your business model. A combination of all means of marketing will work the best.

Search Engines

Naru2008 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:13:29 CST

What is a Search Engine?

Google, Yahoo, AOL, Bing, Dogpile, and MSN are examples of search engines. A search engine pulls information from the web and delivers it to you quickly on a search engine results page.

Example of a Search Engine Results Page:

Looks familiar, huh? You use search engine results pages all of the time.

How do Search Engines Work?

For search engines to deliver information to you quickly, they must send out a large number of spiders or bots to crawl the web.

Most people think the spiders are crawling the web after you submit a search. However, there is way too much information on the web for the spiders to crawl every site in a matter of seconds. Once the spiders crawl the web, the information is stored in a large database for quick retrieval. This is called 'indexing'.

Why is this important to your Wetpaint site? This lets you know that the search engines don't recognize changes to your pages immediately. The spiders crawl and re-crawl every site on the web in different intervals. More popular sites, like news sites, get crawled every day, and perhaps several times a day. Other sites might get crawled every two weeks.

The Order of Results

This is the most important part concerning your site. When a person searches for a subject, a search engine only has one job: to deliver exactly what you are looking for down to the smallest detail. If a search engine didn't give you the results you wanted, you would probably stop using it.

Once a search engine returns results, it must rank those results in order of relevance and importance. No one knows exactly how search engines do this, and that is for a good reason. Back in the early days of the internet, some site owners would perform sneaky practices to trick the search engines. They would do things like type the entire dictionary on their site so that their site would come up for every search, even if it didn't contain information on what the persons was searching for. Search Engine's companies got smart and changed the way that search engines produce results so that they give a person only results that are relevant.

There are several ways to improve your ranks with the search engines. Though there is no magic way to make sure your site is listed first on a results page, performing as many tasks as you can in the Tips for a More Successful Site section will help your site get listed closer to the top of the results page for searches related to the topic of your site. Sites with lots of traffic get listed first with the search engines, and sites that get listed first with the search engines get more traffic.

Site Name and Description

Naru2008 — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:04:03 CST

Your site name and site description are both important areas of your wiki's settings. They both directly impact the way your site is listed and displayed in search engines.
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Site Name

Your site's name is used to identify your site on the website, in invitation emails, links to this website and in the search engines.
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For example, the Mythbusers wiki has used the site name, which follows the name of every page on the site in the search listings:
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The best site names:

Are short (2-5 words in length) so that they are easier to remember.
Are informative and compelling.
Are simple. Using numbers or letters to replace words can be hard to remember.
Use words that are relevant to your site.
Include at least one important search term.

Site Description

A site description provides potential visitors and search engines with a concise explanation of what your site is about.
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Take a look at the example below of the Mythbusters' Google listing, highlighted in yellow:
-

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The best site descriptions:

Are one to two sentences.
Describe what you can find on the site and why you might want to check it out.
Include at least one search term in your description.
Use between 15-25 words.
Use complete sentences.

Twitter

Naru2008 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:28:49 CST

What is Twitter?

Watch this video on a simple explanation about Twitter:

How can using Twitter help promote my wiki?

You can use it as an RSS feed kind of thing about your wiki. Other Twitter users can see it, get interested to see what is happening on your wiki, and eventually go to your wiki and possibly become members.

What are people doing on Twitter?

People are reading about Wetpaint Central and going to it right now, from Bedding7's Twitter account.
Here is a photo from Bedding7's Twitter account:

Using Keyword Tags

Naru2008 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:26:36 CST

What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word or set of words that are descriptive and specific to your site or page's topic.

For example, let's say you make a page about healthy dog food.

Good keywords:
Healthy dog food, healthy dog food, feeding dogs, healthy dogs, healthy dog diet, natural dog treats.

Bad keywords:
Food, good food, feeding, healthy, diet.

The set of bad keywords are not good because they are missing the element that is most important to the subject - dogs.

Be sure to use your keywords throughout your page. This way, people who are searching for healthy dog food can find your page on the web.

What are Keyword Tags?

Tagging your pages with relevant keywords is an important way to improve your site. Keyword tags provide users and search engines with a way to judge and navigate to certain pages. For instructions on how to add keyword tags to a page, visit Keyword Tags editing.

Why use Keyword Tags?

Tagging your pages will help both the visitors to your site and the search engines.

Users can click on a keyword tag to see other pages with the same tags, or often times, the pages on your site will have "Related Links" at the bottom of the page that use the tag information to find related pages & threads.

Search engines use the keyword tag(s) to better judge what the page is about, and like users, search engines will follow the "Related Links" links to find other similar pages. Having a good collection of pages on a specific topic will help establish the credibility of your site on that topic.

How many Keyword Tags should I use on a Page?

For best results, try to limit your tagging to 2-5 keyword tags per page. You'll notice this page has been tagged with: keyword tagging, keyword tags, and tags. Sometimes one word will work for the tag, but other times you'll need two or three.

Another example would be a page about Michael Jordan. Tags for that page might be: Jordan, Michael Jordon, and NBA All stars.

However, if the entire site is about Michael Jordan, then you will want to be a little more specific to the page's tags, for example: Michael Jordon bio, Michael Jordon biography, and Michael Jordon history.

How Keywords Help Drive Traffic

Naru2008 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:21:29 CST

How Keywords Help Drive Traffic

It is possible to achieve a higher ranking in search engines like Google by using keywords in various ways on your site. Keywords are special phrases that are most likely to be typed into search engines as people seek out a particular topic. (To find popular keyword phrases related to your Wetpaint site, visit SEO Tools).

Hierarchy of Keyword Importance

Not all keywords are created equal. Search engines will give greater weight to certain keywords based on where they are found on the page. While there are no hard and fast rules about this, it's a science and an art! Think about keywords in the following general order of importance:

Page titles
Remember, this includes the home page! Because page titles appear at the very top of every page in the browser's title bar, it is the first thing a crawler will see.

Headers and Subheads:
For more on headers and subheaders, see Where to Use Keyword Tags.

Body text:

Use keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph in the body text.
Keywords at the top of your page carry more weight than those at the bottom of the page.
Text in bold is more important to crawlers. Don't overdo it and put all your text in bold, though.)
Use your desired phrase at least four times in your article, but any more than twelve is pushing it. Search engines are smart and know when people are stuffing keywords into pages for the purpose of a higher ranking.
Hint: The ideal number of times your keyword(s) should appear in a 750-word article is five or six.

Linked text:
Keywords that are linked are also meaningful to search engine crawlers. For example, when you're sending readers to a related page, don't use "For more information, click here." Instead, try: "For more information, visit Pregnancy Tips."

Names on photos:

When you place an image, always include an image name and always be sure to use keywords in the name! This will also be what the visitor sees when they place their cursor over the photo.

Where to Use Keyword Tags

Naru2008 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:15:11 CST

1. Use Keywords in Page Titles

Page titles will show up in the organic results on a search engine, so titles that contain “top” keywords related to content on that page will be the most meaningful.
Short page titles with keywords are also helpful for readers to scan for info they are interested in.
Visit the Style Guide for more tips on page titles.
The examples below show SEO-optimized page titles from the navigation bars of wikiFido and Secrets of the Da Vinci Code, where almost every page is named using an important keyword:

2. Label Every Page with Keyword Tags

Keyword tags help your users and search engine crawlers find what is discussed or conveyed on a particular page. Tags (which are always click-able) are found in two places:

1. The shaded bar at the bottom of each page (from wikifido):

2. In the "Tag Cloud" (from wikifido):

Use tags for each page that relate to keywords you have identified for the content on that page. (See SEO Tools for free online resources that can help identify which tags are most appropriate for your Wetpaint site.)
Too many tags at the top of your pages can be distracting to visitors. Try to keep tag lines to two lines maximum, or between 5 and 10 tags total, per page.

3. Use Keywords in Headings

Headers and subheads are the two main headline styles you can use on a Wetpaint Site, and are used to organize your content into main topics and secondary topics.
Headers and subheads that contain keywords are more meaningful to search engine crawlers and can help increase your ranking. (In terms of hierarchy, keywords in headers have slightly higher importance than keywords in subheads.)
Clear, direct headers and subheads are meaningful to users. See the section on Headlines & Subheads in the Style Guide.
See example in #4, below.

4. Use Keywords in Body Text

Body text is the main block of text on each page. Most page edits and contributions take place here.
Search engine crawlers look for keywords in body text, so keep the body text keyword-rich. Keywords toward the top of the page are more important to crawlers than those found lower on the page.
Aim for 1 to 3 instances of a 2-word keyword phrase every 100 words.
Use discretion! While it is good to reiterate terms that are related to the content on a specific page, if you use too many, it will be hard to read. Also, crawlers could pick up that you're trying to "work the system" and this could affect your ranking.
To find the best keyword tags for your site, visit SEO Tools.

An example of a page rich with keywords in both headlines, tags, and body text:

Custom URL

Naru2008 — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:03:10 CST

Why have a Custom URL?

A custom URL or domain name is easier to remember than a Wetpaint URL. So, if someone finds your site on the web, they are much more likely to remember a URL that doesn't have Wetpaint in it. (Sad, we know, but true.) The easier your URL is to remember, the more likely people will come back and visit your site. And that's what having a great site is all about!

Examples: An easy URL to remember: http://doghealth.com A hard URL to remember: http://doghealth.wetpaint.com	An easy URL to remember: http://wikiFido.com A hard URL to remember: http://wikiFido.wetpaint.com

Examples:

An easy URL to remember:
http://doghealth.com

A hard URL to remember:
http://doghealth.wetpaint.com

An easy URL to remember:
http://wikiFido.com

A hard URL to remember:
http://wikiFido.wetpaint.com

Tips for Picking a Good URL

Why build a site if no one comes to visit? We have suggestions for you to help people find your site when they search for it on Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. You will have a lot more luck with getting noticed if you follow these guidelines when picking a URL.

1. Describe your site An obvious URL is a good URL. These URLs are easy to remember, so they get pasted on web pages, shared, written down, and most importantly, they are recognized by search engines.	2. Keep your URL short The shorter the URL, the easier to copy & paste, read over the phone, write down, or email the URL.
3. Keep it simple-- No symbols or capital letters Though it might look cool, no one likes to type http://~mylove4mileycyrus~.com. Avoid symbols, numbers, and capital letters. Use lowercase letters and avoid anything else. Exception to the rule: In this day and age, it is hard to find a URL that has not been taken. If you really must have http://doghealth.com and it is taken, you can use one hyphen and take http://dog-health.com. It is not the best solution, but your site can still be found.	4. Use your keywords Using keywords in page titles is a great way for people to find your site. If a keyword that describes your site is in your URL, you have a very good chance of moving to the front of the line and onto the first couple of pages of Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. For example, if your site is about dog health, a good URL would be http://doghealth.com, as opposed to http://ilovemydog.com
5. Sub-domains are harder for search engines to find If you have a site on Wetpaint, it is automatically on a sub-domain. It's easier for a search engine to find a site that only has '.com' after the name. For example, it's easier to find http://doghealth.com than http://doghealth.wetpaint.com.

Ben Elowitz

CryingDove — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 07:11:11 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Wetpaint News

Naru2008 — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:58:43 CST

Wikis on Wetpaint News

Wetpaint Wikis' Slow Response
Wetpaint is aware of the issue. They do not know what is wrong. It could be many things. Everything works, but slowly. Please be patient with them as they try to figure everything out.

4th Annual Golden Paint Can Awards
You may now vote for your favorite wikis in 20 categories. Voting will last from September 16 through December 31. You may access the site through this link: http://goldenpaintcanawards.wetpaint.com/

Wikis on Wetpaint Status

Check back here for the most up-to-date information on the status of the Wetpaint wiki platform. Having a problem that isn't listed here?

1.7.12 - Wetpaint's wikis are loading slowly, and the servers are getting out of sync every now and then. They are looking into the problem, and will give us an update (hopefully) soon and tell us what is going on, as well as when it will be fixed.

12.15.11 - Wetpaint rolled out a release that accidentaly turned on ads on ad-free sites. Wetpaint sent out a release last night that fixed the problem. All ad-free sites are once again ad-free.

8.03.11 - Wetpaint's Image Servers screwed up for some apparent reason last weekend, but the problem is now fixed.
7.11.11 - Wetpaint's servers had a problem the past weekend, and it corrupted some files. Wetpaint has fixed this, and you should not have any problems with servers lagging on updating.
6.1.11 - Wetpaint's server lag seems to have fixed itself.

6.1.11 - Transactional email is back up and running (thread notifications, p2p message notifications, invites, etc).
5.10.11 - Server lag appears to be reappearing. You may notice a delay in updates, messages, etc. Email notifications are currently out of whack. Wetpaint is working to correct the issues.

4.29.11 - Recaptcha's old SSL certificate expired yesterday which is why the registration page stopped working. The issue has been resolved.

4.28.11 - There seems to be an issue with the Captcha area of the sign up screen. Wetpaint has been notified of this problem. Please be patient until the problem is resolved.

4.20.11 - Users may experience some minor lag in threads, usually thread posts disappearing and reappearing again. This is most likely because of the last release, and should iron itself out within a few weeks.

4.13.11 - All bugs have been fixed, and users can now move pages again.

1.18.11 - The development team is currently working to bring several out of sync database servers up to date. Once this problem is corrected, users will no longer go "back in time" upon refreshing a page and landing on a bad server; all pages, threads, and private messages will be up to date as soon as this problem is corrected.

Image	Meaning
	Everything is running well, a successful release was pushed or a previously mentioned problem has been resolved.
	When you see this it means that there was a downtime to fix something.
	When you see this in the Latest Status Update section, it means there is an upcoming Wetpaint maintenance.

Looking for previous status updates? Please see the page history for this information.

Dotster

CryingDove — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:30:36 CST

Discount on custom domains for Wetpaint users

Dotster has teamed up with Wetpaint.com to offer you a special discount on new domain names. Go to http://www.dotster.com/products/domains/wetpaint/ for details.

How it works

Say you want your site to be called davidspage.net. All you'd have to do is follow the simple steps below, and in just a few minutes you could be sending your friends to davidspage.net to check out your Wetpaint page. When your friends type in davidspage.net, they'll automatically be taken straight to your Wetpaint page (or wherever else you want). Once you own your domain you can change the forwarding address as often as you like, free!

Step 1 - Registering your domain
First, click here to be taken to the special Dotster page for Wetpaint users. Next, search for the domain name you'd like to register. Complete the simple checkout process, and login to your Dotster account. You can pay with any major credit card, or with PayPal. To login to your Dotster account, visit Dotster.com and enter your login information.

Step 2 - Pointing your new domain to your Wetpaint page
Once you've logged in to your Dotster account, click the "My Domains" tab at the top of the page. Click on the domain name you want to forward to your Wetpaint site. Toward the bottom of the page, click the word "Manage" next to the service "URL Forwarding." In the box labeled "Destination" at the very top of the page, enter the address of your Wetpaint page. If you'd like, enter a title for your page, some keywords that describe your site, and a brief description. This step is totally optional. From the drop-down menu labeled "Forwarding Type," select "URL Forwarding Unmasked."
Click the button that says "Update," and you're done!

If you need help...
We're here to help if you need us! You can always visit Dotster's online support center to get answers to your questions 24/7, and from 6am to 6pm (PST) you can call our sales team at (800)-350-5947.

How to Maintain and/or Increase Activity

Naru2008 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:48:03 CST

How do I increase activity on my Wiki?
Activity is probably the most helpful quality of a wiki, but also the hardest to maintain. As soon as a Wiki's activity has dropped, getting it back up again is a very difficult and complicated matter. This page should help you keep your site activity up, and maybe even raise it a little bit.

First of all, you'll want to try and follow the Wikis by Wetpaint Top 100 Tips carefully. These are the most useful and precise tips, and will have the greatest effect on your Wiki. They are:

1	Keep your site Activity high - you can do many things to keep your site activity up. Make contests, like posting contests, or picture-making contests. Look Here for more fun things to do on your site!

2	Make sure your site is easy to navigate - If people can't find their way around your site, and are always ending up on Page A when they were looking for Page B, they might get frustrated and leave.

3	Keep your pages up to date - You don't want users going onto a 'Help' page that tells them to email the Administrator that doesn't go on the site anymore!

4	Quality is Better than Quantity - Make sure that the pages you've made are all good looking, with relevant content on them. Blank pages aren't going to help you get on the list! Look Here for ideas.

5	Nobody likes a Chatterbox - Try not to send your users a ridiculous amount of messages. Many people have left wikis (Especially Roleplay sites) because they get about 30 messages a week, and many emails.

6	Your site can't and won't look after itself - Make sure you have a team of trusty moderators ready in case you suddenly have to leave or go somewhere for a while. Otherwise your site could get messy!

7	Keep things/people that break rules away - As soon as you get a spammer on your site, make sure them and anything they made is gone. This can scare people away, and ruin your activity.

The next trick to keeping up your site activity is Competitions and Awards. They can come together, or seperate. You can create Competitions which will make your users have a boost of activity whilst the competition is taking place. A few examples of Competitions are:

Awards can be won by winning these competions, or something different entirely. For examples of what awards are, and what kind of goals you should set for them can be seen here.

The final trick to keeping up your activity is your Welcome message. Your welcome message can affect a user's entire time on your site, and can also determine how long they stay. Look Here for more information on how Welcome Messages can affect your users, and how to create a good welcome message.

If you have a helpful method for increasing/maintaining site activity, please post a thread and we might add it to the page!

Using "Chat Threads" to Boost Activity

Naru2008 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:47:34 CST

What is a Chat Thread?

A chat thread is a simple thread on the homepage of your site, where users can discuss anything they like. It is one of the most-used tactics to boost activity.

The problem with talking through messages is that it doesn't count towards your site activity, no matter how much you talk, but talking on a thread does count to your activity, and is also much more fun.

Creating a chat thread is easy. All you have to do is post a thread titled '-Site Name- Official Chat Thread' and post a few rules (As well as a short description of what the thread is about), then click post, and presto! Your very own chat thread! It also helps to get things rolling by posting things like 'So how is everyone today?'

Here is an example of a Chat Thread on WCC2.

Where can Activity get you?

Naru2008 — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:45:37 CST

Where can Activity get me? The answer is simple - everywhere. Well, close enough. Site activity can get people to contribute more and invite friends, which leads to a better quality site. The better your site, the higher you get on search engines.	How can I increase Activity? There's plenty of ways to increase your wiki's activity. You can use things like Festivals, Competitions, and freedom to make the site a lot more fun and a lot more active. You could: Make a Competition Invite Friends Allow some freedom to your users, like an area to create anything they want Make your pages look good and unique

Where can Activity get me?
The answer is simple - everywhere. Well, close enough. Site activity can get people to contribute more and invite friends, which leads to a better quality site. The better your site, the higher you get on search engines.

How can I increase Activity?
There's plenty of ways to increase your wiki's activity. You can use things like Festivals, Competitions, and freedom to make the site a lot more fun and a lot more active. You could:

Wetpaint Central - Recently Updated Pages

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Put A Link in Your Email Signature

Link on Message Boards the Right Way

How to Promote a Site

Why Get the Word Out?

How to Get the Word Out

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Site Name and Description

Site Name

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Dotster

Discount on custom domains for Wetpaint users

How it works

How to Maintain and/or Increase Activity

Using "Chat Threads" to Boost Activity

What is a Chat Thread?

Where can Activity get you?