IndexU Support

I do apologize for the issues users may have encountered over the last few days with support from Nicecoder. I have experienced this issue with my own server.

What happens is that somehow mail gets “stuck” in queue but yet the mailserver still allows a few emails through. It’s quite strange because for a few days you think things are still normal until you notice that only a very limited amount of people are actually responding to you.

I’d like to thank users again for their patience and say that I wish I could have spent more time on some issues but I needed to be blunt and to the point on many responses simply due to the volume of replies that I needed to make.

Perhaps incidents like this are a good thing. I believe in being as open as possible with business and telling users what is going on when something happens and keeping communication going with the customers.

I believe this is what IndexU users want and it’s what I try to give them to the best of my abilities. I think I did a good job of that today and will perhaps show John and Dody that I need another raise ;)

So to all the people who wished Dody, John and myself a happy new year and that I didn’t respond to, Happy New Year to you as well. I hope that like is kind to you all and business is even better.

I’m just waiting for confirmation, but the last time I spoke with John and Dody they agreed that we could start a rewards program on the forum.

I had two ideas, the first would be a “post of the month” which would be the post that made the greatest impact on the forum. It could be in the form of a new mod, or some support, or a fix for an issue but it must be significan’t and affect multiple users.

The second idea was for a “mod of the month” type of deal where only a new mod is considered and the mod writer that wins receives the reward.

We could try to have both, which would reward more people in the end, but the rewards would be lower. Personally I feel that we should have a mod of the month reward to get those mod writers to start spitting out mods.

I won’t say what the reward is, in case they decide to change it, but it is significant.

Also, did you miss out on the lower price for licenses? No you didn’t because licenses are STILL priced at $60 for now. Honestly I’m trying to convince the powers that be that a quality product combined with a low price will get them more customers in the long run. So tell your friends, or use my referral link (not so subtle hint) and get yourself a new license.

Also, watch for the Nicecoder newsletter coming to an inbox near you. Hopefully by the time that is out I will be able to bust out the big secret that I’ve been holding back on. I can’t promise you anything, but I can at least put you on the edge of your seat!

A user recently asked if he could add nofollow tags only to some links. And that answer is no as IndexU cannot selectively do this on it’s own. However, I’m all about customization and there is a way to add nofollow tags if you want to add a bit of code to a particular type of links (basic, sponsored or premium)

I’m sure many of you directory owners out there are familiar with the post by Google’s Matt Cutts on reporting paid links.

At this time, no directory script that I know of has the ability to add nofollow tags. And in fact I read a post today in regards to PHPLD that says it can’t be done right now.

Now think about this. The concern with paid links is that the links are being purchased not just to be placed on the site, but being purchased to help to increase Page Rank.

And that’s the issue! Of course users want to increase page rank, but they also want exposure too.

So here’s what I suggest doing with your directory if you are concerned. For all of your free links, do not add the nofollow code. For the paid links, so you don’t penalize yourself or your customer, you add the nofollow code.

Google understands the nofollow rule and knows that the nofollow tag will not pass page rank. This keeps everyone safe and offers the customer exposure.

There may be a better explanation by Google in the future (there already is, but it still doesn’t answer all questions) but for now the nofollow is your best bet to keeping yourself safe.

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My previous post on this topic was done in some haste after a brainstorm and it didn’t really work, even though I thought it would. Perhaps I’ll take a further look into this issue and figure out how to do it a better way.