Is this website obsolete?

[samurman]

This is an example of a blog on another fur web site... It will give folks some ideas.

 

http://mksoftspot.blogspot.com/

 

W

 

Besides Mikhail's, there was Sheeny's blog but they both died out around the same time in 2006-2007, which is really unfortunate. If they had continued in their efforts, I am sure the fur blog scene would have flourished.

 

Edited to fix link. Wallee.

[samurman]

We could definitely add blogging software to this website for members to use. At this time, I am thinking WordPress (http://wordpress.org/) might be a reasonable choice.

 

But first, I for one, would like to hear some additional opinions on the subject.

 

Personally, I would not prefer having my blog under the Fur Den, because my primary reason for writing a blog is to reach out to the people and it would be better if I placed my blog on an equal footing with the blogs of other bloggers, my target audience. Two most popular blog sites are wordpress.com and blogspot.com (owned by Google). They both have their own blog tracking features, and in addition, facebook has a nice looking blog tracking applet that you can embed in your blog.

 

On a general level, one very important reason we encourage members of the Fur Den to start their own blogs is so that they can give links to and talk about the Fur Den in their blogs, which would in turn increase the pagerank of the Den and draw more people. If we host the blogs under the Den, then google would probably consider them as being under the same domain as the Fur Den, hence they would not have the desired impact.

[JGalanos]

But first, I for one, would like to hear some additional opinions on the subject.

 

I'm not a blog fan. I'm reasonably content with the Den "as is". I would not be opposed to adding a blog to the Den ... You just wouldn't necessarily be doing it fur me.

[Worker 11811]

On a general level, one very important reason we encourage members of the Fur Den to start their own blogs is so that they can give links to and talk about the Fur Den in their blogs, which would in turn increase the pagerank of the Den and draw more people. If we host the blogs under the Den, then google would probably consider them as being under the same domain as the Fur Den, hence they would not have the desired impact.

 

I agree with that. This forum and the various blogs would feed off each other.

If one site links to another and that site links back, the effect on the search ranking is good but if you have several sites which interconnect the effect is even greater. Plus ALL will benefit from increased ranking.

[samurman]

As for the Gallery. We would LOVE to organize it better!!! However, the work level is huge and most folks who have began to get involved just did not last long. They get discouraged so quickly. But, once again, if someone would like to work on this we would love to have the help. I have to warn you though. You will be looking at huge numbers of photos of women in furs!

 

WF and other admins,

 

Is it too difficult to open up adding keywords to the gallery pictures to all members? I mean, flickr has that option: "You may also have the right to add tags to your friends' photos, if you friends set that option in the privacy settings for their photos." Since, all members of the Fur Den can be considered as (fur) "friends," I see no harm in adding that functionality.

 

Let me explain a bit. Have you ever seen the tags at professional image banks? They tag everything! For example, look at this image:

http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/Enlargement.aspx?id=CN00032753

 

Now, look at the associated Corbis keywords:

1, Half-length, Adults, Leopard furs, Clothing, Luxury, Coat, Mid-adult, Collar, Mid-adult woman, Designer clothing, Model, Expensive, Outerwear, Eye contact, People, Fashion, Portrait, Fashion model, Studio shot... It goes on, but I am tired of typing them all (can't copy and paste).

 

Of course, our priorities will be different and not so general as Corbis, but still, a member of the Den might be interested in images of fur clad women who are wearing red lipstick. Then, when he comes across those images, he might just add "red lipstick" as keyword then voila! We suddenly have a collection of fur and red lipstick! Or another member might be particularly interested in images with leather gloves, so he might just seek them out and add keyword "leather gloves" to them. This way, he does not even have to save all those images to his harddisk into a special folder. They will be ready for him online. (Did you hear that Google is planning to distribute a netbook with no harddisk, no DVD, etc for free? Everything will be on the network...) Then, hopefully, in a few years' time, if anyone, for some reason, needs to dig out images of fur clad women who also happen to wear leather gloves and red lipstick, our gallery will have it instantly!

 

It's all about searchability. I can't tell you how useful such a well tagged gallery would be, and this can only be done as a group, not just a few individuals tasked to it.

 

For example, right now, I am thinking of preparing a post about fur lined denim jackets. After spending two nights, going over thousands of images, I have already found a few, but I remember there were many more images of such jackets. If I can't find them when I need them, what good is it to have them either in my harddisk or on the Den gallery, sitting among thousands of other images, waiting to be "discovered"?

 

Another useful feature would be to be able to search through the comments. Sometimes, the image uploader may not know about the fur type or the model's name, but such info are provided by the commenters. It would be nice to have that capability.

[AKcoyote]

Is it too difficult to open up adding keywords to the gallery pictures to all members?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: We try to encourage those who upload images to add appropriate keywords to the record for the file when they do the upload. Uploaders should also be able to update the record for images they uploaded previously. Other than that, only Gallery admins can modify the record for an image/video file in the Gallery. The Coppermine application does NOT allow anybody to edit any file which is what you mentioned. And I think that could be a very bad idea.

[White Fox]

Samurman...

 

We could actually search the Gallery if all photos there had the fur name for instance. It probably isn't actually a great deal more difficult for moderators to insert the key words in the Gallery than those on other sites so that they are searchable. But, there are still hundreds and maybe thousands of photos that have not been indexed that way. After doing thousands upon thousands the staff of the Gallery here just get discouraged. Any searchword can very easily be entered by a moderator. (And, we could make you such if you wish.) But they do have to be entered manually just as in the sites you mentioned, and with 20,000 photos that takes a long, long long ...... long long time.

 

There are problems with some other photo sites too. For instance some at least claim that they own any photo there. The second a photo is posted, they are copyright to that site.

 

And of course even after it is all finished people can still post photos that are not indexed with the proper search words.

 

Should we have done that from the start? Yep, indeed we should have. But that is famous last words. Again, if you would like to index some we can very easily make that happen. Just let us know. I would absolutely love to finish the indexing project. But.......

 

Bed time again darn it.

 

W

[samurman]

We could actually search the Gallery if all photos there had the fur name for instance. It probably isn't actually a great deal more difficult for moderators to insert the key words in the Gallery than those on other sites so that they are searchable. But, there are still hundreds and maybe thousands of photos that have not been indexed that way. After doing thousands upon thousands the staff of the Gallery here just get discouraged. Any searchword can very easily be entered by a moderator. (And, we could make you such if you wish.) But they do have to be entered manually just as in the sites you mentioned, and with 20,000 photos that takes a long, long long ...... long long time.

 

Exactly! That's why it cannot be done by a few dedicated individuals. It has to be a community wide effort.

 

Again, if you would like to index some we can very easily make that happen. Just let us know. I would absolutely love to finish the indexing project. But.......

 

The thing is that such a project never actually gets finished. It should go on and on, because new pictures are uploaded every day, every week...

[samurman]

Is it too difficult to open up adding keywords to the gallery pictures to all members?

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: We try to encourage those who upload images to add appropriate keywords to the record for the file when they do the upload. Uploaders should also be able to update the record for images they uploaded previously. Other than that, only Gallery admins can modify the record for an image/video file in the Gallery. The Coppermine application does NOT allow anybody to edit any file which is what you mentioned. And I think that could be a very bad idea.

 

OK, I was suspecting such a limitation through gallery software anyway. BUT, keywords is just a field name. You may call it keywords, tags, whatever. How about the comments? Is it possible to extend searches to the comments field? If we could search through the comments, a similar functionality could be achieved. Instead of entering useful info into the keyword field, people would simply add them as comments. As long as they are searchable.

[AKcoyote]

How about the comments? Is it possible to extend searches to the comments field?

Sorry, comments are not searchable in the current version of Coppermine.

[samurman]

When Google or any other search engine "crawls" a website and records all the links, it only records what the webmaster or the members actually type as the link. If other people don't use the full "vdsden.thefurden.com" when they write a link Google/Yahoo won't record it.

 

...

 

I wouldn't want to have a whole lot of links to the Fur Den on random pages all over the internet but, if there are sites whose visitors might be interested in the Fur Den's mission, it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a few more links.

 

Like I said, we will return the favor.

 

At the risk of getting deathly boring in technical detail, let me make this clarification, as it must have slipped my attention the first time I read your post Worker:

 

I was not referring to other sites linking to the subdomain vdsden.thefurden.com. It's perfectly fine that they link to the main address, www.thefurden.com.

 

I was trying to say that the subdomain vdsden.thefurden.com, where our links section resides, is not indexed by google. I understand that if google does not index this subdomain, then the fact that the Den links back to those sites would not be registered by google, which means you (or we) "returning the favor" would not actually be helping increase those sites' pagerank in google.

 

I tried to illustrate this point through Mr. Mockle's website, but since the Den is full of references to it, I think my example was not clear enough. Let me do it again, this time with an obscure enough website: Bill Worb furs (www.billworbfurs.com). It is among the links section, under "Information Sources"

http://vdsden.thefurden.com/fdwiki/?n=Links.InformationSources?action=browse

 

But if you do a google search with any of the following keywords, it does not come up:

billworbfurs.com site:vdsden.thefurden.com

billworbfurs.com site:thefurden.com

"Bill Worb" site:thefurden.com

worb site:thefurden.com

 

As I understand, this means that the Den will not be contributing to raise billworbfurs.com's pagerank, right?

[Worker 11811]

Aha!

 

You have hit upon something I had forgotten!

 

Do you remember when that crazy crawler "Twiceler" was raiding our site and practically shut us down by using up all our bandwidth? Maybe you do... but anyway... I blocked that section of the site from being searched by bots to help keep us on the air. That's why we don't show up!

 

Good catch!

 

Let me go into the back room and talk to my manager.

I'll be back shortly with an answer.

[AKcoyote]

samurman,

as Worker said, Good Catch " title="Applause" />

 

It is very easy to forget that what was setup months ago to handle a problem at the time could have unintended side effects.

 

After we make any changes, it could take a couple months before the search engines will show any new data in their search results.

[samurman]

Humbly in the service of the Den and the fur community at large Regarding the indexing speed of the search engines, that's one more advantage of blogspot.com. Since it is owned by google, blog posts at blogspot.com are indexed very fast, within 48 hours max.

 

It's too bad Coppermine software has such restrictions

[Worker 11811]

Okay! I removed the restriction on searching our Library wiki from our "robots.txt" file. This will allow search bots like Google and Yahoo to access that part of our site and they will follow any links it finds to other websites. When the bot finds links back to our site, they will start ranking us on their search engines again.

 

It will take a couple-few weeks for the search engines to start ranking us again. Slowly but surely, we will start showing up on Google searches again.

 

samurman, thank you very much for reminding me of my error!

[White Fox]

Folks, this shows how if others would join in the conversation here and give us ideas what a great little site that this could be. Come on out. Give us your ideas. Tell us what we do right. Tell us what we do wrong!!! We love to hear that as well. That is the way that we can learn and know what you really would like to see here. What you like. What you don't like. If you hate us with a passion tell us that too, and why!

 

We would love to hear any suggestions that you have for us for improvements and changes. With our server not allowing XXX that is pretty much unchangeable, but anything else is pretty much on the table. What do you think of Samurman's blog idea? What ideas do you have for other areas of the site either existing now or possible new areas. We would love to hear from you!

 

Is Samurman the only one who has thought of a blog? It is really hard to develop these areas on only one suggestion. Has anyone else any such thoughts?

 

W

[Worker 11811]

What do you think of Samurman's blog idea?

 

I think blogs are very important. There are too many websites where the user does not have any control over content. Blogs solve that problem. The user is his own boss. He or she gets to post whatever he wants. There is nobody to tell them what is allowed or not allowed, within the rules of the User Agreement of the site.

 

Second, blogs are what make search engines valuable. The more people blog about a certain subject, the more things become relevant to a certain topic. For instance, if a lot of people start blogging about fur, the search engines will start ranking the word "fur" as a relevant keyword to every URL linked to on those pages. If enough people use the word "fur" in their blogs and post links to fur related sites, the word "fur" will become a hot topic on Google, Yahoo and all the others.

[AKcoyote]

It's too bad Coppermine software has such restrictions

I think rather than restrictions, it is a case design limitations - features not thought of during the application design process.

[grouchomg]

I ran across this old thread while perusing the Den and have a comment. But first, no, I don't think The Fur Den is obsolete.

 

Here's my comment. Over thirty people have joined The Fur Den since Jan 1, me among them. However, only three of us new members have posted anything. I wish that more new members would post.

 

I suspect some members - old as well as new - view this site as an opportunity to be a fur voyeur... nothing wrong with that. Then there are those like me who want to use the Den as a place to converse and interact, to contact and chat with people of like mind and for support in our fur love. I suspect that I will use chat and other social media to converse with some of you, but the Den is a place that I can come back to for new ideas and contacts.

 

Anywho, that's my point of view. Lunch is over, and I have to go back to my engineering personna. I do very much like the Den.

[JGalanos]

I do very much like the Den.

 

Ditto!

 

[auzmink]

For my 10cents worth, I am a Facebook member. I am to patrol my kids on-line. They know it, and let me join in their conversations.

 

My whole impression of the Social networking sites is the significant negative / 'dissing' attitude which flies around these sites. No-one says "G'day' anymore but spends a lot of time bad-mouthing individuals / things. (Get rid of this person, I don't like that rule, stop this organisation).

 

Whilst some of these things are good, with so much negative energy flying around, putting this forum on such a level would remove the great positive energy we have here. Yes its patrolled, and that's why we can encourage each other rather than shirking and hiding under a barrage of negative sentiments from un-informed individuals.

 

The chat site in the past didn't work for me, even time zones limited good interaction.

 

Perhaps postings are reduced in number over time, a lot of things have already been stated / discussed. As time progresses we can hope more individuals contribute and the profile of the site increase peoples ability / safety to wear fur more openly.

 

Lets keep the positive

 

Auzmink

[White Fox]

Re wishing more new people would post.

 

Man, how often I have heard that and agree with absolutely everyone who said it. I've even been known to dare and bribe silent members out there to join. Partly because they will have fun. ANd partly because any site like this needs new members to come on to post new ideas, etc. They would energize this site so very much if they would come in and join. And yet so few do. On this site and many others.

 

I think that most "lurkers" think that their contribution here would be very minimal, and as such makes no different to this site or any other. When, it is folks like them who "make the site" at any particular time. They actually could be it's life blood just by joining, giving their ideas, etc.

 

Anyhow, Auz brings some fantastic points here as well. How so many members of these sites can be so negative. I often wonder if they even realize that there are doing it any more as they have seen that so much! I think that they forget by times that it is a person pretty much exactly like them who is in charge of the site, and all of the moderators and staff are just the same. And how many people take the time to thank Brandy for her efforts here, or others who post often. Find links. Post pictures in the Gallery. I've often heard mods here say how hard it is to delete a message as they k now that someone took the time to write that. Organize their thoughts. Find the links. etc.

 

Any site is the individuals who make it up. Each individual can make such a huge difference by doing nothing more than posting a message now and then. I just wish that more people would realize that just that little bit of typing by them would make the site so much more interesting for themselves and others!

 

W

[starrxxfoxx]

To all members and White Fox,

 

This site forum subject and website is not obsolete.

 

The Fur Den site forum and website allows comments and photos diverse and interesting, agreeable and disagreeable, positive and negative. As one who was kicked off of Fur Fashion Forums for simply having a disagreeable opinion on the way a fur coat looked, I appreciate the Fur Den welcoming all members and their opinions.

 

That is the Fur Den's positive contribution to us all.

 

I appreciate that all the members contribute with photos or comments. I appreciate that I can post smoking in fur photos that I know some of our members appreciate, and some don't. I have never seen a negative comment about the smoking in fur photos I have posted from any member because it appears our members are more open to diversity, and that is a fine testament to our membership and our owner and administrator White Fox who controls the game here.

 

Kudos to MrC1946 for bringing me in to this fine group.

 

Sincerely,

 

Starrxxfoxx

[White Fox]

This should be a thread for you folks and not for me, but I did want to reply once again to Star's message here. One of the things that can be so difficult on sites like these is to make rules that are respectful of members, but at the same time allow everyone to "Have a great time" because after all this is the reason for our existence.

 

You might notice that Starr has been a member here for a long while, even though he has not made a lot of posts. I seem to recall that he has made a lot of very great contributions to our Gallery indeed!

 

I just wanted to say here that I remember a comment made by one of our moderators here at one point. I am not even sure if it is a mod from the present or the past! We have a small forum where moderators record that they moved/deleted/edited a post and tell others why. The mod's comment was "I so hated to remove that post because the member took a long time to think of that message. Organize their thoughts, and type it all out. It really bothers me to remove it!" It is so great to be on a site where we have so little to do in that respect. Sure a "peta freak" gets in now than and we have to take care of that. But seldom do we have other issues. Each and every time that a member writes something we do try to consider his/her thoughts, because each one of those messages are the very being - the very heart - of this site. It is not me who or FrBrGr who make it. It is not the moderators. It is each of you folks! And the work you do making every individual message there.

 

But, we really do welcome comments here on posts even though MANY other sites but fur and not fur oriented do not. Thoughts. Ideas. Those posts of that type are the ones that often times reflect the true outlook of the individual members. They are the ones that really "Come from the heart"! So as long as they do not actually "attack" another member in any way they are indeed some of the most welcome posts here.

 

As for furs and smoking, no not all members like those. But, that is part off being a human. I might not like what someone else loves. So, that is why we made our own folder for those. Those who love them will find them all together to enjoy rather than having to sort through everywhere to find them. And those who do not like them can simply not look. But that is indeed part of the "fetish slant" to this site.

 

Really appreciate hearing the thoughts of you folks on this thread. It means a great deal to us in fact knowing your thoughts, likes, and dislikes, etc. With that I will go back to the side lines again and hope to hear from more of you.

[JGalanos]

If I did the math right, we've had a new member join the Den on average every other day year-to-date. And over 10% of them have already made one or more posts. I would consider those encouraging statistics.

 

Long live the Den!