viglink.com Monetization

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VTRDark
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viglink.com Monetization

Post by VTRDark »

On the eBay thread I noticed a viglink.com script trying to connect. Why? I also noticed that is one of those threads that is slow for me when submitting a post.
VigLink is a San Francisco-based, outbound-traffic monetization service for publishers, forums, and bloggers. VigLink specializes in in-text advertising and marketing
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Wicky
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Re: viglink.com Monetization

Post by Wicky »

If it's what I think it is - something similar or same was on the Superhawk forum a while back making key words i.e oil etc. into links to commercial external URLs.

It seemed annoyingly glitchy / wrongly configured appearing even when logged in - as it seemed designed to work in general to expose unregistered vistors to the site to advertising.

Not that it is explicity apparent here but that's when logged in.

Or it was indicative of malware incorporated into the server side of the forum software or sumfink.
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VTRDark
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Re: viglink.com Monetization

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The thing is why do we need it at the detriment to forum performane by adding more scripts and more importantly the selling of our data. Lets not turn into facebook. If the forum is struggling to survive there are better ways to fund it. For example a voluntary donation torwards monthy costs. We could have a donate box via a PayPal account with a progress bar that shows the amount as it fills up. Start charging selling fee's, or selectivly allow buisness advertisers in the sales who pay to advertise. There's many other routes that are available to reach monthly server costs. It should also be a closed forum too to help prevent freeloaders and encourage more to join which in turn increases the amount voluntary donations and to top it off add's more privacy and security for members. You don't register you don't view. We could also do with rebranding so not a VTR specific forum. I think it should always remain dedicated more torwards the VTR but have this kind of a seperate area within the forum like a historic / classics archival section but the VTR remaining part of our heritage, maybe even a sub-forum within something bigger.

It's not the cheapest option but if members funded it then it would't be so bad, but moving the forum software over xenforo would be a good move and brings us more inline with a facebook style vibe that follk love and we are loosing members too. It would give us a member page where others can comment on, add friends etc. Xenforo is like a hybrid, a cross between the classic style forum and a Social networking site. There's lots of third party free and paid for add-ons to the software if one wanted them. A fantastic community for help. If we want the forum to survive then we need to bring things up to date and modernise it. No fear of loosing what we have either as phpBB can be imported across. It would be better than facebook or do folks simply like facebook because they can bullshit, wind people up and abuse each other without too much fear of being clamped down on or banned. Xenforo is user friendly from both sides admin/tech side and the users side and simply brings us more up to date with a lot more features. phpBB is old hat, not as secure and vulnerable nor futurproof. Were competing against the social media sites so why not bring ourselves more inline with some of the features and ease of use they have minus the bullshit, winding people up and abuse not to mention better security and more privacy.

Admittaly it would be a bit of work to begin with to make the switch and a good way to go about it is create a sub-forum under this domain. Install xenforo. import the contents of this across as a duplicate, clean everything up, customize, create new forum sections and subsections, invite select members across use it and beta test, then swap it with this one.

The forum is dying so lets do something about it.
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Re: viglink.com Monetization

Post by Wicky »

Have you screenshots of this viglink.com in operation or any advertising appearing?

Edit - yes I Can see this javascript going on

https://cdn.viglink.com/api/vglnk.js
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