Another thing I just thought about.
Perhaps it's a good idea to create some kind of bbc template that the user has to fill in when he/she want's to submit a forum to the directory.
So that it's easy to see all information about a forum.

Something like this:

Forum Description:
Admin username:
Contact address:
Looking for post exchanges with forums about:

Sponsored links

I'll be honest with you.

It's very difficult to get people excited over much of anything, even when you offer them something for free -- like a relevant directory listing. When I began the SMFoogle directory, I thought that all admins would take advantage of having a free & relevant link pointing to their forum. And when I took things a step further by suggesting that everyone add a Tinyportal Box that features RSS feeds from SMFoogle, I thought that it could be a real communal effort to have all participating administrators help to build each others inbound link counts.

Despite having SMFoogle's banner advertised on multiple authority SMF sites, traffic is very low to the directory. Even the number of links on the directory is low.. are there only 361 SMF website in existence?

But such is the nature of the internet. Look at how many members vs. the number of guests are online @ the main SMF website -- what this tells me is that people want to grab some information and implement it without participating in a community. More than anything else, it's disheartening to see good ideas that never come to true fruition.

However, I'm having the theme of the directory redesigned at the moment. Hopefully, if I can make it look more appealing, then more people will spend time on there.

The search engines love the directory.

It sounds like a good idea. I don't think I ever heard of it though. If you have a link I would like to check it out. SMFoogle could be something I could possibly be interested in..I click on your banner Nite, I didn't know it was a link....

But Nite is right, I noticed alot of guests that just come through alot of communities to get there hands on information and then just scram and you never hear from them again. Unless, you have a constant flow of usfull information they want to get there hands on. Now I am not bashing guests at all, they are what helps build a community.

Though on both my forums I look at IP'S from guests to see how often that IP range is on and I get the sameone's at least three times a day. Some have joined and others just search. Some boards I noticed give Guests alot to do when they are on the forum, but it that something good, since if they can do almost everything that members can do, why should they join....

Looks a bit crowded.
But still nice and appealing

I think the concept is very, very nice way to bring other sites together not to mention build a strong based community

This shouldn't become a community only for SMF admins though
But it does seem that most of the current members come from there.


[offtopic]
And what exactly do you mean with "are all up in themselves" ?

Actually good that you mention my sig, because those links are no longer true.
Guess I just forgot about that
But you're right, things should be kept as simple as possible.