My shameless promotion

[Ming Keong]

Wow, there's a place to shamelessly promote my sites, so here goes. :P

pdatrends - All the latest PDA news, trends, discussions and services

MingKeong.com - My shameless self glorifying website, but you'll be amazed at how many job offers I get via this website. Anyway, the resume is not updated as I've moved on to a job in Paris.

ObjectsFusion - My reseller website. We offer web applications development and maintenance in addition to the sale of web space. The site is currently redirecting to pdatrends as the business will only be launched on 1st dec.

Musicorld - My bro's website on discounts on musicals in London's West End. He'll work on more reviews and revamp the site in a couple of weeks so that I can host it properly as a addon domain.

[David]

Welcome to HG! I really like your PDA site, and the "shameless" site is a pretty cool implementation. I actually bookmarked the PDA site to go back and visit later when I've got more time. I didn't know VB allowed for front end functionality like that or did you just customize it? I don't have any experience with VB other than as a user, I've mainly dealt with YaBBSE in the past which is now morphed into SimpleMachines. Look forward to seeing your ObjectsFusion site when it goes live. Post back when it does.

David

[David]

Well, answered my own question I found the portals forum on vbulletin.org and saw the vbindex, etc. Nice addons.

David

[Ming Keong]

You're right, I'm using vbindex for the front end to vbulletin. vBulletin is the best forum software there is and one of the wonderful things about it is the degree of hackability, as you've found out from the scripts on vbulletin.org. Check out vbulletintemplates.com too if you're looking for template hacks.

ObjectsFusion is now live btw. It's however based on a modified version of one of the host gator templates because I needed to get it up quickly, while focusing more on the business, technology and the marketing.

[David]

Thanks, I'll give the templates site a look. I thought you'd have some really cool looking site for ObjectsFusion.com based on your other work, but I completely understand your rationale. Better to focus on work that pays I think YaBBSE and SM are pretty comparrable to VB from what I have seen, but like I said I really haven't administered a VB site. I guess the thing I like is they are both pretty efficient with PHP, MySQL and bandwidth usage - but VB is $200 vs. Free for the others. I do admit that VB has a more professional look and feel, and I know it does have at least marginally more features than come standard in the others. I'm just considering starting up a few community based sites, and at $200/domain it would get rather expensive.

David

[Ming Keong]

I've tried a few packages but still find vb to be the best package that fits my needs. I do agree that US$160 is very prohibiting, but it may probably be the single best investment that can be made for any huge site. It's extremely scalable and highly configurable. The codes are solid and very well written too. The pricing gets cheaper if you purchase a few licenses. I'm almost starting to sound like I work for vb huh? *lol*

There's another of my sites that I've somehow forgotten to mention in my first post.

SPUG - The Singapore Palm User Group. It's a vibrant group that centres around the Palm OS, but we've attracted people from other platforms who've become active members.

[David]

Another interesting site, another bookmark Is that site another VB portal type hack, or is that a modified version of a blog package? My mistake, $160 not $200, still gets expensive though if your talking about multiple domains. A couple might would be revenue generating but not for some time, so I'll just have to see what makes sense.

Yeah, I think VB should be giving you free licenses or something for the good sales job you're doing

David

[Ming Keong]

SPUG is pretty much like pdatrends. It's running on a hacked up version of vb. The frontpage is using vbindex as well. I started off with SPUG in 1999 but as it's a volunteer organization, there're a couple of restrictions. That was why pdatrends was born. If you've noticed, all the Palm news on pdatrends gets propagated down to SPUG. I was lazy and wanted to update only one site so I got the scripts to do the job. :P

For revenue, try using Google's Adsense. They're pretty good and have pretty much made pdatrends pay for itself. Internet advertising burst way back in 1999, before which, I easily earned about 100 US dollars each month from ObjectsFusion (then a webmaster resource website), doing absolutely nothing. Since then, internet advertising dropped to a few cents a month and it just wasn't worth the effort. However, it's all starting to pick up again, so be sure to ride this wave.

I just found out that the referral programme for vbulletin actually works. Someone bought a copy of vbulletin from a link on my site and it earned me 23 odd euros! Can everyone please go to my site, click on the vbulletin link at the bottom, and purchase a copy? lol.. I'm kidding.

[David]

I thought the content looked pretty similar on those 2 sites. The vbindex and other hacks/addons are free correct? Yeah, I looked at Adsense a good while back and thought about it. I really didn't think having ads on the main business site would be appropriate, but if I get a couple of these community sites going in the next few months I will definitely revisit since they would be good candidates for something like Adsense. I can't say whether or not I'll end up going the VB route, but if I do, I'll give you credit for it

David

[Ming Keong]

Yes, all the hacks and addons that you find on vb.org are free.

Having ads on business sites is a very bad idea, but they're great for community sites.

Thx, if you do intend to get vb, feel free to click the link on my site.

[David]

If I end up going with VB, I will

David

[Ming Keong]

Thanks. Yes, I'm using autopilot for the site. The basic template was taken from host gator and I simply modified it. I've hacked autopilot a little to overcome some limitations and to suit my needs. If you're starting out, I would suggest testing the site thoroughly before deploying. There're a lot of loopholes that can get you in trouble.

For example, if you give people 1 month free trial and they sign on for a domain with the account, they don't pay you on the first month. What if someone really hates me and decides to register for free trials with domains continuously, not pay for the domain at all because the first month is free, and then cancel the account and paypal subscription? I'll end up depleted in funds, with a lot of useless domain that I paid for and thus own.

What I did was to offer domain registration only if you do not sign on for a free trial. So there're two sets of packages available. Trial account that cannot register domains, and normal account that can register domains. The codes need to be modified a little for this set up to work. The easiest solution would of course to disable free trials. :P

Good luck for your new site..