Which would be a batter layout?

[draggar]

I'm building a couple of communities that would be some pages of information and content, a blog, and possibly forums.

The forums would not be in the root, it would be one page in.

My question is, which would be better for SEO:

Having a splash page of information (about the site etc..) and have the blog in it's own folder or have the blog as the splash page and have the pages linked from the blog?

[synapse]

imho ... more dynamic (frequently updated) content up front of the site as best as makes sense (no reason you can't have u'r forum / blog in a sub dir if you simply include a 'recent threads / updates' on your home / splash page

[draggar]

Originally Posted by synapse

imho ... more dynamic (frequently updated) content up front of the site as best as makes sense

I was thinking along this way. Have the blog up front with the news and have links to the "pages" on a side navigation bar.

Debating over the forums, to have them or not. Maybe not in the start.

[elivate]

Originally Posted by draggar

I was thinking along this way. Have the blog up front with the news and have links to the "pages" on a side navigation bar.

Debating over the forums, to have them or not. Maybe not in the start.

Another good method is to have a "recent news" or "recent posts" section on the front page that has the title, a small blurb, and a link to the article or post...

[draggar]

Originally Posted by elivate

Another good method is to have a "recent news" or "recent posts" section on the front page that has the title, a small blurb, and a link to the article or post...

I'm sure that could be done with an RSS feed, but how could I set it up? only show a paragraph then link to the blog / forum?

If I'm going to incorporate RSS feeds then I should use SMF for my forum (especially if I'm going to import RSS feeds).

[elivate]

Originally Posted by draggar

I'm sure that could be done with an RSS feed, but how could I set it up? only show a paragraph then link to the blog / forum?

If I'm going to incorporate RSS feeds then I should use SMF for my forum (especially if I'm going to import RSS feeds).

What are you using to develop your site?

If you use a cms it should have a built in rss module or widget or whatever... For example, I have been experimenting with SilverStripe a lot lately, they have their own RSS module that you can use to link to your own news... so you can have "current headlines" in a section on the home page...

If you are building this from scratch you can simply query your news posts from your database and determine how many headlines and how much text to show on the home page, it is pretty simple code...

[draggar]

Originally Posted by elivate

What are you using to develop your site?

Notepad. But I do have CS3 if needed.

If you use a cms it should have a built in rss module or widget or whatever... For example, I have been experimenting with SilverStripe a lot lately, they have their own RSS module that you can use to link to your own news... so you can have "current headlines" in a section on the home page...

I haven't started looking into CMS yet but it's been recommended by several people and I've been contemplating it. Maybe this would be good to "test" with one of the communities.

If you are building this from scratch you can simply query your news posts from your database and determine how many headlines and how much text to show on the home page, it is pretty simple code...

Extremely little PHP knowledge at this time. :(

[elivate]

Originally Posted by draggar

Notepad. But I do have CS3 if needed.



I haven't started looking into CMS yet but it's been recommended by several people and I've been contemplating it. Maybe this would be good to "test" with one of the communities.



Extremely little PHP knowledge at this time. :(

I would recommend using a cms then, as well.

I can't find a "perfect" one for me, but I do like SilverStripe. It is very easy to get up and running for a basic site and their tutorials are pretty straight forward. It does require some php coding, and if you want to take your site to another level then you would really need to understand some basic php, but for getting a good site up quickly it is a very good choice...

[accomatic]

You can have your forum in a subdomain (e.g. forum.domain.com), this way you'll get a little more pagerank with interlinking your main domain pages with forum subdomain.

SMF is a good choice. IMO this is the best free forum software available now. Not as good as vB, but it is free, and you will be able to convert to vB anytime.

[draggar]

Originally Posted by elivate

I would recommend using a cms then, as well.

I can't find a "perfect" one for me, but I do like SilverStripe. It is very easy to get up and running for a basic site and their tutorials are pretty straight forward. It does require some php coding, and if you want to take your site to another level then you would really need to understand some basic php, but for getting a good site up quickly it is a very good choice...

I'll take a look at that when I get home tonight. I've played around with some PHP but I don't feel comfortable writing my own code yet (although I do love the require () command).

I'll look at that when I get home tonight.

Originally Posted by accomatic

You can have your forum in a subdomain (e.g. forum.domain.com), this way you'll get a little more pagerank with interlinking your main domain pages with forum subdomain.

I've thought about that but I think I am going to keep them on a single domain and in directories.

SMF is a good choice. IMO this is the best free forum software available now. Not as good as vB, but it is free, and you will be able to convert to vB anytime.

I started using it a few months ago and I do like it, even better than phpBB. Hacks are very easy to install (as opposed to copy & pasting code in phpBB) and built in RSS was very useful for a few projects.

[markus]

Just my 2 cents, good old Matt Cutts wrote that he chose to put his blog at mattcutts .com /blog, i.e in a subdirectory. His advice to people starting up with a blog was to do the same so that if you in the future decide to have something more than a blog at the site you are free to do that without having to move your blog around.