I've been busy doing a lot of work on PFO the past few weeks.

Other than the important upgrade to vBulletin v3.8.1 I implemented near the end of February, I've made the following changes/improvements:

Upgraded vBulletin SEO from 3.2.0 to 3.3.0 RC1

vBulletin SEO is a paid plugin for vBulletin that basically improves its Search Engine Optimization.

Essentially, this gives the site user-friendly URLs and helps it rank better in the search engines. Upgrading was necessary to work properly with vBulletin 3.8.x.

Site Reviews Removed

Our Site Reviews section has been completely removed from the site. While I had spent a lot of time building those reviews in the past, the simple fact is that they were all extremely outdated which basically made them worthless.

Furthermore, the Site Reviews section mysteriously broke about a year ago, but after numerous attempts to fix it, nothing seemed to work so I decided we could do without it.

Got Approved to the GPWA!

It was a surprisingly lengthy process, but PokerForums.org is now an approved portal and member of the GPWA, the Gambling Portal Webmasters Association.

This effectively helps give credibility to the site and shows that we're not running scams, spout malware, etc.

I've added our special badge to the bottom of our advertising page.

Removed "Designed by vBulletinSkinz" Link

I've removed the "Designed by vBulletinSkinz" link that used to reside in the bottom left corner. The designer's site appears to have been hacked and is now sprouting hordes of malware.

Shortened vBulletin Copyright

I've consolidated the vBulletin and Jelsoft copyrights in the footer from two lines to one, making the footer a bit cleaner. This is the absolute minimum I'm allowed to display for the copyright.

Updated Merendi Networks Inc. Copyright Year

I've updated the copyright year in the footer for Merendi Networks Inc. from 2004-2008 to 2004-2009.

Links Page Updated

I have updated our links page by going to every single link on the page, which was a lot, and removing any links that didn't honor our original link exchange, which unfortunately ended up being 90% of them

I'm now considering removing our links page altogether, although I might just improve it to link to only credible and quality sites, not worrying about reciprocal link exchanges anymore.

Non-WWW URLs Redirecting Again

I noticed the other day that for some reason, non-WWW URLs on the site weren't redirecting to the WWW (Ex. http://pokerforums.org should redirect to http://www.pokerforums.org).

I think the vBulletin SEO upgrade overwrote my .htaccess file. Anyhow, I fixed this canonical URL issue to allow for non-www redirecting again.

Old Files Purged

I went in and "Spring Cleaned" the site by deleting and removing a lot of old and defunct files such as old images, pages, etc. It was actually pretty fun as I saw a lot of really old stuff from years ago, such as the Korean Pro-Gamer Starcraft PokerStars avatars I made.

Only bonchkid would understand this and find it funny.

No more .COM in Usernames

I modified the site to prevent anyone from registering a username with a period in it. This effectively stops people from registering usernames that spam their site (Ex. STUPIDPOKERSITE.NET or www.bestrakebackever.com).

There is really no real reason or point to have a period in your name anyway.

Advertising Page Updated

I've updated our advertising page, mainly by providing current stats and figures as well as lowering the prices on a number of our ads. The price drop should encourage advertisers.

Sub-Pages now Template Friendly

This was the most time-consuming improvement. Previously, all the side pages on the site such as Book Reviews, Glossary, etc. were actually static HTML pages that were crafted out of the site's design with the content inserted.

Because of this, the side pages didn't actually have the dynamic vBulletin features and certain areas of the pages didn't work, had very old and outdated data, or even had Javascript errors.

I remade every side page (save for deeper inner pages such as individual tournament pages and interview pages) to use the actual skin's template, and so all of the above issues are now resolved. Basically they're template-friendly now.

I also, created 301 redirects with Mod_Rewrite on all the URLs so that they would stay the same as before and wouldn't incur any Search Engine Optimization penalties or broken links from 3rd party sites.

Minor Design Glitches Fixed

I found and hired an experienced vBulletin skinner and coder to help with issues beyond my scope, since the guy I used to use in the past rarely comes online anymore.

He fixed the following issues:

• Minor design glitch on the "Forum Home" button in FF
• Break-gap design glitch to the right of the logo on large resolutions in FF
• The title on videos husing a font that was hard to read because it was the same colour as the background
• Fixing/Updating 3 templates that needed updating after the upgrade to vBulletin 3.8.1

More to come...

I have a lot more improvements planned and will be working on them during the next couple weeks. Stay tuned!

woot

Still working on the next batch. Have been super busy with work and taxes...