Getting this new site to appear in searches (581 views)
testkitchen45
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 18, 2016 23:30:22 GMT -5
Is there any way the administrators have control over whether this new board will show up in a Google search for variations on "Cooking Light message boards" or "Cooking Light community"? I just Googled, & of course all I get is the CL magazine's links, but I was hoping that when people (maybe former CLBB lurkers or infrequent posters) search, wondering where the CLBB went, maybe our new site could pop up.
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Post by Admin-BevE on Sept 19, 2016 7:55:23 GMT -5
Is there any way the administrators have control over whether this new board will show up in a Google search for variations on "Cooking Light message boards" or "Cooking Light community"? I just Googled, & of course all I get is the CL magazine's links, but I was hoping that when people (maybe former CLBB lurkers or infrequent posters) search, wondering where the CLBB went, maybe our new site could pop up. Unfortunately we cannot legally use Cooking Light in our Forum identification tags as that brand/trademark belongs to Cooking Light/Time Inc. That would surely get us in trouble. We can, however, mention them in our posts. That will help, but not a great deal. The only other way is to pay big bucks to get a Google Adwords account that would help drive searches to us. We are stuck.
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Post by mrswaz on Sept 19, 2016 21:02:10 GMT -5
I think it would be a benefit if when people shared or posted a CL recipe, instead of saying just CL or referring to the CLBB, it would help to actually type the whole thing out.
So instead of: Made the slow cooker chicken soup from the newest CL issue
Use this: Made the Slow Cooker Chicken, Bacon and Potato Soup from Cooking Light
It will take a little while for the search bots to start picking up on this forum, but frequent references can help drive the search engines.
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testkitchen45
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 20, 2016 0:43:13 GMT -5
*saves recipe to MasterCook* Boy, that Cooking Light recipe looks good! Did you make this Cooking Light recipe? Gee, if we had a Cooking Light Bulletin Board, we could post it there. All we have is this Cooking Light community of healthy-cooking aficionados; maybe someone will post a review. Being smart-alecky, of course. But seriously--this recipe looks great; thanks for using it as your example. I may make it this weekend. 
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Post by mrswaz on Sept 20, 2016 9:05:37 GMT -5
*saves recipe to MasterCook* Boy, that Cooking Light recipe looks good! Did you make this Cooking Light recipe? Gee, if we had a Cooking Light Bulletin Board, we could post it there. All we have is this Cooking Light community of healthy-cooking aficionados; maybe someone will post a review. Being smart-alecky, of course. But seriously--this recipe looks great; thanks for using it as your example. I may make it this weekend. LOL! But I didn't post the recipe yet! Off to do just that, because it was a good one...
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Brenda
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Post by Brenda on Sept 20, 2016 9:38:19 GMT -5
I had a Cooking Light recipe that I am not sure that I ever reviewed. It was some kind of marbled, salted, brownie and was from an early version of Cooking Light magazine. Back when I used to post recipes over at the Cooking Light bulletin board (or was it called the Cooking Light message board?) you might find it. In the meantime, I will look for it in my Mastercook cookbooks (I made a bunch of Cooking Light cookbooks there). Valchemist is a name that I bet lots of folks search for. She was such a popular poster over at the Cooking Light boards. Some posters from there had unusual names, too, like Browneye. I wonder if their names might help with searches. Never know. And I dunno, I bet CLBB gets some searches, too. I notice that many old friends use that term. I also notice, while going back though Cooking Light archives that many of members we have lost touch with use Mastercook. In fact, I'm rather astounded to only now discover this fact. EDITING TO ADD: FYI - I just made a post at the Mastercook Discussion Group (doh, why didn't I think about doing that sooner) about Cooking Light forum being closed down and gave the url. Hopefully, some old-time and some new friends will see the post and go look into CLBB and get all the info they need there.  (Later I will, when it's really gone, post about this new forum.)
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Post by mrswaz on Sept 20, 2016 12:35:40 GMT -5
Well, looks like the CLBB is no more. 
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testkitchen45
>100 posts
 
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 20, 2016 12:41:42 GMT -5
Well, looks like the CLBB is no more. I know. The rational part of my brain says "geez; it's just an online site--what's the big deal?" But the emotional part says, "CLBB radically altered my cooking life & provided tons of interesting non-cooking chat; I feel like I've lost an out-of-town friend." The cool things are that a) we have HERE! from now on, yay!, and 2) in searching/saving tons of CLBB community recipes, I've found several that I want to make Right Now. So even in its demise, the CLBB inspired me to try to be creative. Now that I'm done saving stuff, though, it'll feel good to close the laptop & go do other things for awhile . . .
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Post by Admin-BevE on Sept 20, 2016 21:46:43 GMT -5
Glad we are all here. Hopefully our site will begin to show up in searches. Thanks to some astute reasoning by testkitchen45 , we now have a bunch of good words in the "Description" field for our site. Search engines rely on this description field for indexing websites. It'll take a bit of time for this to begin to affect searches, but it should help. Thanks, testkitchen45 !
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leahamm
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Post by leahamm on Sept 25, 2016 20:52:34 GMT -5
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Post by Admin-BevE on Sept 25, 2016 21:58:36 GMT -5
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Post by Admin-BevE on Sept 26, 2016 6:46:56 GMT -5
Google search today - hit on page 4 
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Post by Catbatty on Sept 26, 2016 10:46:39 GMT -5
Admin reply: Ah, but lurkers are very welcome here, too.  So, if it's not your nature to write, we understand.
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Post by beth on Sept 26, 2016 10:52:10 GMT -5
It sounds like a lot of folks have heard through the grapevine or on Facebook. Others are trying to be reached, but haven't been around and/or have changed email addresses over the years. I will try to type out Cooking Light and Cooking Light Community at least some of the time -- I have used CL and CLBB for so long that it is automatic. I think that some of the recpe titles will help too. Perhaps we shoud repost some of the most notorious recipes or rekindle some of the thread topics so they would show up in a search -- things like Psycho Chicken, Jewel's Garlicky Green Beans, Drive Your Neighbors Nuts Chicken, Lindrusso's Magnificent Marinara (I made that one and my son's didn't like it- can you imagine? They were kids. I need to make it again.) I mean I need to try Lindrusso's Magnificent Marinara, the one that was posted on the Cooking Light Community board, rocked the Cooking Light Belletin Board and was later published (or a variation of) in Cooking Light Magazine. Cookiee, I don't think we lost the CLBB due to decreaseed activity. If anything, I think the fact that activity picked up may have caught their attention. I was thinking this past week, and in light of events and hacks the world over, I think the most likely scenario might have had to do with cyber security and the fact that they had largely ignored the forum for some time. It had been spammed to near death and I'm sure it was hacked a few times. With Time owning CL and SL, the boards may have given avenues for hackers to gain access to larger data banks. Maybe that "bandwidth" excuse had something to do with security. I don't know enough to make a more specific guess, but that seems like a logical progression. I had bookmarked the SL community board and checked it after CL went down, then deleted the bookmark. I tried to find it last night and got error messages. I am not certain since I didn't save the bookmark, but I thinkk the SL site may have gone down without any notice. At least we had some.
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Post by Catbatty on Sept 26, 2016 10:54:07 GMT -5
My IT daughter told me that IF we find search hits that show up for us, we should all try to go use that link several times. Why? She said it depends on technical stuff, whether it will help us or not, but that if the algorithm is set up a certain way, us pressing the link (or links) can cause our forum to be pushed higher and higher up the search hit list. (Boy, I am saying this badly. Plain English: click on any 'hits' of us a whole bunch, MIGHT bring our forum up to top of lists when folks do a search for certain words. Oh, I still didn't express this well. Crud.) PRESS LINKS WHEN WE DISCOVER THEM...might help us be seen. Might help old friends find us. (Daughter used to work on these issues for her employer. Getting seen in searches.)
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Post by beth on Sept 26, 2016 11:04:05 GMT -5
Yep, as I understand it, there are two ways to get to the top of a search list -- money and raw popularity.
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Post by mrswaz on Sept 26, 2016 11:09:36 GMT -5
It sounds like a lot of folks have heard through the grapevine or on Facebook. Others are trying to be reached, but haven't been around and/or have changed email addresses over the years. I will try to type out Cooking Light and Cooking Light Community at least some of the time -- I have used CL and CLBB for so long that it is automatic. I think that some of the recpe titles will help too. Perhaps we shoud repost some of the most notorious recipes or rekindle some of the thread topics so they would show up in a search -- things like Psycho Chicken, Jewel's Garlicky Green Beans, Drive Your Neighbors Nuts Chicken, Lindrusso's Magnificent Marinara (I made that one and my son's didn't like it- can you imagine? They were kids. I need to make it again.) I mean I need to try Lindrusso's Magnificent Marinara, the one that was posted on the Cooking Light Community board, rocked the Cooking Light Belletin Board and was later published (or a variation of) in Cooking Light Magazine. I think this is a great idea. I had Lindrusso's Marinara bookmarked, so went ahead and made a thread for it.
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Post by beth on Sept 26, 2016 11:16:32 GMT -5
You mean Lindrusso's Magnificent Marinara that used to be found on the Cooking Light Community Bulleting Board where we talked about Great Food and Other Stuff can now be found on the Great Food Free Forum now that Cooking Light and Time shut down the CLBB?  Great! We didn't lose it!
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testkitchen45
>100 posts
 
I have made 166 posts
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I joined September 2016
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 26, 2016 16:05:27 GMT -5
Yay; it looks as if our scheming--I mean planning--has been successful in getting this board to appear in searches for the Cooking Light Bulletin Board.
(You know--the former forum for the Cooking Light Magazine Community. Heh.)
I do hope lurkers will join, as well as former CLBBers who may not be comfortable settling in here yet. I miss the CLBB chatter about food & all sorts of other things, & am excited to see activity picking up.
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Post by beth on Sept 26, 2016 16:52:56 GMT -5
I think security makes sense -- from what you saw, even more so. I wondered if the effort to increase activity made it worse or caught their attentions. We will never know, and it doesn't matter now. Collectively, we have mor e recipes than we will ever prepare and there will always be more, but the conversations, comments, tips and such. I am already fnding myself missing that. I may be making a couple of tiered cakes later this fall --- one for a joint birthday for 3 girls and one for a wedding. I learned about the marhmallow fondant here - I mean on the Cooking Light Bulletin Board, and have made it, but I was thinking I should read over the tips. They aren't there......
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testkitchen45
>100 posts
 
I have made 166 posts
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 26, 2016 17:14:53 GMT -5
I think security makes sense -- from what you saw, even more so. I wondered if the effort to increase activity made it worse or caught their attentions. We will never know, and it doesn't matter now. Collectively, we have mor e recipes than we will ever prepare and there will always be more, but the conversations, comments, tips and such. I am already fnding myself missing that. I may be making a couple of tiered cakes later this fall --- one for a joint birthday for 3 girls and one for a wedding. I learned about the marhmallow fondant here - I mean on the Cooking Light Bulletin Board, and have made it, but I was thinking I should read over the tips. They aren't there...... I searched my computer for the word "fondant," and the only CLBB hit was a thread on perfectly decorated iced cookies, not cakes. However, someone on our new GFF might have the marshmallow fondant thread (I hope; that sounds great). As we find things we missed, other GFFers might have them.
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leahamm
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Post by leahamm on Sept 27, 2016 18:06:03 GMT -5
Yesterday, I experimented by posting this header along with a recipe. Only time will tell when google starts picking up out "bait"!
"This recipe was once posted on the former Cooking Light members bulletin board, which no longer exists. The "CLBB" was permanently closed in September."
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Post by beth on Sept 28, 2016 22:04:00 GMT -5
I can still read the links I saved with that Control S, but anything else, including hitting any active code or link, takes me to that same CL page
Testkitchen -- I have a marshmallow fondant recipe that I copied off a blog. It may have been linked in the CL thread. Let me know if you want it. I just wondered if there were any handling tips I might have forgotten. I know some folks use powdered sugar or cornstarch for handling and not sticking -- others use crisco. I'll be okay -- it's more just knowing that you can't go looking back anytime you want to check something.
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testkitchen45
>100 posts
 
I have made 166 posts
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Post by testkitchen45 on Sept 29, 2016 21:23:56 GMT -5
I can still read the links I saved with that Control S, but anything else, including hitting any active code or link, takes me to that same CL page Testkitchen -- I have a marshmallow fondant recipe that I copied off a blog. It may have been linked in the CL thread. Let me know if you want it. I just wondered if there were any handling tips I might have forgotten. I know some folks use powdered sugar or cornstarch for handling and not sticking -- others use crisco. I'll be okay -- it's more just knowing that you can't go looking back anytime you want to check something. Thanks; I would love that recipe! Sounds less cloying sweet than some. Cookieee, what's really amazing is that when I pull up my name in a Google search, the links still work! I guess if CLBB isn't going to archive the boards, they haven't killed them off yet. I've seen all those links over here but just assumed they weren't working any more.
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leahamm
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Post by leahamm on Sept 29, 2016 23:26:28 GMT -5
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Post by Catbatty on Sept 30, 2016 11:31:28 GMT -5
Works for me. Thank you, LeaHamm.
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