Register a BA on "Abandonware ring" & "Beta Software ring"

[abandonware]

Here I bring a little suggestion that does not involve changing anything on the server or the FTP, only involves changing a little the mind (or at least get more tolerance) of the few members who think that abandonware is garbage in the FTP.

The idea is that BA is more known in the abandonware community. As? For example registering BA in abandonware ring such as:

http://www.abandonwarering.com/index.php
http://www.squakenet.com/abandonwarering/default.asp
http://www.toar.us/index.html

And if there were a "Beta Software ring" do the same (Let know if you know any). This will bring more users to contribute to the site, whether by posting, providing software, writing on the wiki, etc.

I expect an adult discussion, and that does not end in a war between the pro and anti abandonware users. If so, please administrator or moderator closed the topic. Since the goal is to improve BA and BA consists of all of us who are its members.

[hounsell]

Such organisations are little more than dubious circle-jerks with people just cramming their sites with reciprocating links.
BA is better off without them, especially considering that according to Alexa, only the middle of those three gets more traffic than BA already anyway. (Also, Alexa clearly seems to suggest that most people find their way onto BA using beta-related keywords. I'm sure Andy has a more accurate picture, but I'd be surprised if this wasn't the case.)

Also, they look to have a "no warez" provision. I remain unconvinced that our "no warez" definition is compatible with theirs - it's entirely open to interpretation anyway, since legally, all abanonware is warez.

[mrpijey]

Well, not all abandonware is warez (quite a few companies released their formely-payware completely free), but the majority of it, so essentially I agree with you. And I don't think BA's participation of such "rings" would be beneficial as some of them are of a questionable nature, some sites carry contents that are not fit with our policies, and as you say, our policies may not fit theirs. And I always found these rings to be kind of amateur-ish, where just a bunch of badly managed (and generally abandoned, the irony) sites linked to eachother without any greater regards to the other sites in the ring.
BA stands alone just fine with Andy's SEO additions and our site itself is known amongst those that are interested in (mainly) betas and abandonware. We will work more on the abandonware aspect of this site but we kept our abandonware since it was part of us from the start, and we're going to expand it as much as possible.

[MbccompanyX]

a lot of people know this website (i found this website more of 2 years ago by a simple video about beta but last year i recorded) and register BetaArchive on "Abandonware ring" and olther similar website will no take effects about members

[abandonware]

Ok, maybe it was a bad idea, but if BA is so well known and has so much traffic (including FTP) we are failing as a community we fail to register more users? Without wishing to offend, five or ten users per day is not a big growth.

I came to this site after searching a lot in Google and went to give the topic of Download / Request where there was a post with a long list of programs abandonware. Perhaps a list of FTP content to attract more people to register and provide to access the FTP. I do not know, maybe it's another dumb idea already treated in some topic, but it worked with me.

[Andy]

BA has been growing since the day it opened. We now top around 4000 unique visitors per day which is a huge achievement. This time last year we were 25% less on that figure, so we must be doing something right?

What I don't want to see is us register on these sites and then start getting spammed with a huge influx of people who want access to the files and aren't interested in discussion. If people want both they find BA themselves. We're not hard to find if you do the right search.

[hounsell]

BA has been growing since the day it opened. We now top around 4000 unique visitors per day which is a huge achievement. This time last year we were 25% less on that figure, so we must be doing something right?

What I don't want to see is us register on these sites and then start getting spammed with a huge influx of people who want access to the files and aren't interested in discussion. If people want both they find BA themselves. We're not hard to find if you do the right search.

Agreed. Traffic is also a much better indicator of a site's health than number of members. As I pointed out, during a quick assessment of the sites you linked to, BA already gets more traffic than two of them (much more than one of them) and attracts users with far more relevant keywords as well. This shows that BA, even if there is less discussion than the competition, is considered to be the more authoritative site, and frankly, that's a much more desirable title than any such ring can offer us. We'd be lending credibility to them, and not the other way around.

As much as it pains me to praise anyone in the SEO profession (damn spammers, all of them ), Andy has done a great job of promoting and optimising BA, especially considering it's largely unstructured user discussion.

[Andy]

Don't you start on the "SEO's are spammers" thing SEO's who spam are not SEO's, they're spammers. There is a defined difference And to be fair, the optimisation I've done for BA wasn't even everything I could do. I wanted BA to be as natural as possible and it's cost nothing to "SEO" the site to where it is today. It's better to do it naturally in the long run in any case.

[hounsell]

I wanted BA to be as natural as possible and it's cost nothing to "SEO" the site to where it is today. It's better to do it naturally in the long run in any case.

Of course, but it's no easy task for a site of BA's size and where almost all the content is unstructured, user-generated content.

Take a compliment already. I don't hand them out that often.

[Andy]

I did take it as a compliment, I just wanted to make it clear

User generated content is often the best too. It's always different and unique, and that's what makes it good.

[hounsell]

That's true, but it's relatively unstructured and often strays off topic in a forum environment. While BA's nature makes it easy to qualify for a large range of keywords in SERPs, I should think it's relatively difficult to target key ones using the generated content.

[Andy]

It makes it virtually impossible. That's why I don't try to be honest. If I was to target Windows 8 terms, the amount of work necessary would be huge. We'd never come near any of the top searches so there is no point trying. If we had a few million and more people knew about us perhaps we would, but until that day there is little point trying. We're better off targeting terms related directly to betas/abw etc.

[john11]

I came to this site after searching a lot in Google and went to give the topic of Download / Request where there was a post with a long list of programs abandonware.

So did I, most did (as far as I know). So whats the point of registering in a Ring? Do you honestly even visit these "rings", and then sign up for websites?

What I don't want to see is us register on these sites and then start getting spammed with a huge influx of people who want access to the files and aren't interested in discussion. If people want both they find BA themselves. We're not hard to find if you do the right search.

BA is actually very good in terms of spam, of course there is a bit of it, but mainly its good discussion, and there are always some informed people in any thread, so you get interesting posts.

I completely agree with letting people search, if you go and advertise whats on the FTP, the quality of the forum will plummet. The main point of this site is the discussion, FTP is just a feature, so that you can get the betas were talking about.