[HOW-TO] Make your Welcome Headers an image!

**Brandon Sheley** · 09-06-2006, 10:29 AM

So, why change your welcome headers to an image?

The same exact text is being read on every single page by the spiders who see it. Because of it's prominent placement on forums, they are apt to use it to describe each of your page.

We started seeing blurbs from our welcome header messages show up in search engine "descriptions" of individual pages, and it said nothing about the content of the page to people who might find us.

It also dillutes the value of other keywords on each forumhome, or thread display, because they show up on every single page.

Spiders can not read the text in images (yet! :spin: ), so we should take advantage of that to keep content relevent keywords as important as we can.

================================================== ===============[/b]

STEP 1) Make an image with the text you want for your welcome headers.

I prefer Adobe Photoshop, but many image programs out there can do it.

Make it a gif, transparent background so that it fits on all your themes and you dont have to worry about color differences at all.

Make parts you want people to click on 'bold' so they stand out.

Use the same font if you want it to "blend in" to the rest of your page, or use something different to make it stand out even more!

Make sure that the width of the image is less than the width of your page. If fixed width, make sure it's less or equal to the width of the lowest image resolution you care about for your users.

IE: If people who use less than 800x600 don't matter much to you, then make it 800 or less.

When done, it should look something like this:

================================================== ===============
political-forums-welcome.jpg

================================================== ===============

Once you're done, in Dreamweaver or Frontpage (or another program if you have it):

STEP 2) Create New: HTML

Insert -> Image

Put the tag attributes you want, if any

Click Okay

At the bottom, you should see something similar to this:

1.jpg

STEP 3) Select the square:

2.jpg

STEP 4) Select the text you want to be a link.

At the bottom, you want to add the link you want that text to go to, any alt text, as well as whether or not you want it to load into a new page.

imagemap3.jpg

Repeat this step for other areas you want to select, like is done on The Liberty Lounge Political Forums

Once done, you should see some code like this in the code part of your HTML editor:

Code:

<center>


<img src="http://www.libertylounge.net/status/political-forums-welcome.gif" width="800" height="200" border="0" usemap="#Map" alt="Liberty Lounge Political Forums - Welcome" />
<map name="Map" id="Map"><area shape="rect" coords="23,96,193,116" href="http://www.libertylounge.net/forums/register.php" alt="Register today!" />
<area shape="rect" coords="504,136,587,160" href="http://www.libertylounge.net/forums/sendmessage.php" alt="Contact us!" />
</map>


</center>

STEP 5) AdminCP -> vBulletin Options -> Welcome Headers

You'll want to click on the "click here" link under the "Enable Guest Message" part of the Welcome Headers option, and paste the above code from your HTML editor in there.

Then, viola!

I only changed the guest one, because it's the only one spiders will see. The other ones can remain as text for your users, but now spiders wont index the same text on every. single. page.

Credit to this post

ps. You'll need this hack - Welcome headers - Improve community registration rates - vBulletin.org Forum

Crow · 10-07-2006, 07:21 PM

Thanks for this, check out my site and let me know what you think?? I think it came out great! but then again I'm the admin lol

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-07-2006, 07:24 PM

you have a real talent with graphics

if you want to make a few $'s I'll pay ya to make a nice one for vbulletinsetup ?

graphics isn't my strong point.. I just know enough to be dangerous

ps, in yours I'd add a pink backgroud, to make the users login so they don't see a big pink box

works pretty well actually.. If I could do that to mine I would..

Crow · 10-07-2006, 07:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brandon

you have a real talent with graphics

if you want to make a few $'s I'll pay ya to make a nice one for vbulletinsetup ?

graphics isn't my strong point.. I just know enough to be dangerous

ps, in yours I'd add a pink backgroud, to make the users login so they don't see a big pink box

works pretty well actually.. If I could do that to mine I would..

Sure I'll hook ya up with one.. I added ya to msn. I was thinking of making it a red type color to grab the attation.. its ok I have it all in PSD format so eeasy to change.. I'll be making all the welcome header messages same as the guest one..

Let me know what you'd like your to look like or say...

And thanks for the kind words!

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-07-2006, 07:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crow

Sure I'll hook ya up with one.. I added ya to msn. I was thinking of making it a red type color to grab the attation.. its ok I have it all in PSD format so eeasy to change.. I'll be making all the welcome header messages same as the guest one..

Let me know what you'd like your to look like or say...

And thanks for the kind words!

should be okay to be a psd

I've like mine to say something like it does now empasizing vBulletin Optimization and vBulletin help

and I'll turn my msn back on
thanks

Crow · 10-07-2006, 08:17 PM

PM sent with image and code to get it working right...

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-07-2006, 09:22 PM

I have both showing now

how do I remove the stock one

thanks Crow

Got it,,, Thanks man Thats hot

Crow · 10-07-2006, 09:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brandon

I have both showing now

how do I remove the stock one

thanks Crow

Got it,,, Thanks man Thats hot

Theres a "Thanks" button ya know!

Weres my FREE PR listings? :P

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-07-2006, 09:33 PM

I don't see any PR on this site.. yet

i clicked thanks,, 2 times now

Crow · 10-07-2006, 09:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brandon

I don't see any PR on this site.. yet

http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/39-post1.html :B
I say a nice free "Featured links" and 2 link backs would be ok with me :P

**joh** · 10-07-2006, 11:14 PM

I like this.

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-08-2006, 08:53 AM

ya, he did a good job

we'll get one like this for you too

Crow · 10-08-2006, 10:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joh

I like this.

Thanks, I can see it now, the amount of sites with my image lol

**joh** · 10-08-2006, 10:06 AM

crow, what else can you do?

Crow · 10-08-2006, 10:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by joh

crow, what else can you do?

What do you mean? I can smoke a pack of cigarettes a day!

**joh** · 10-08-2006, 11:45 AM

LOL, can you do this in 3D?

**RedMatrix** · 10-15-2006, 09:46 PM

I just wanted to add, that if you're using the $welcomeheaders hack found on vb.org, then you have an option to show the headers only once per visit.

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-16-2006, 04:11 AM

yup, I thought about that but I wanted to show it each time to give inventive to the guest to register so they don't have to see it :p

**RedMatrix** · 10-17-2006, 01:27 PM

Yeah. Listen, I'm not too keen on having the welcome header as an image. If you just use the META description tag, that's the snippet the SE will use on the SERP.

If you think I'm wrong, please prove it by showing an example that has their GUEST WELCOME in the snippet, yet they ARE using the meta description tag. :P

binus · 10-17-2006, 02:03 PM

nice post...thanks

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-17-2006, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedMatrix

Yeah. Listen, I'm not too keen on having the welcome header as an image. If you just use the META description tag, that's the snippet the SE will use on the SERP.

If you think I'm wrong, please prove it by showing an example that has their GUEST WELCOME in the snippet, yet they ARE using the meta description tag. :P

When I would look at my SERP's with the non image, I would see the same text from my welcome header on all indexed pages. :2sad:

**jw00dy** · 10-18-2006, 10:25 PM

I just looked at my site:mydomain.com on msn and GUESS WHAT!?!?

It has my welcome headers in it

Which reminded me that I wanted to do this. I'll get to work on creating an image welcome header straight away. Thanks for the tip.

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-18-2006, 10:30 PM

yup, all pages will have that text in it because its closest to the top

That's why we switched to an image

**jw00dy** · 10-19-2006, 12:57 PM

It got one created. Looks okay, but working with an image is not quite as easy as working with text

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-19-2006, 03:53 PM

ya, it's a little different, do you need some help ?

**RedMatrix** · 10-21-2006, 11:10 PM

I've seen the first 10 words of my welcome, plus 10 words surrounding the Search term. It's not so bad.

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-22-2006, 12:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedMatrix

I've seen the first 10 words of my welcome, plus 10 words surrounding the Search term. It's not so bad.

Live Search: site:herolounge.com/

here you can see the same text, over and over

**RedMatrix** · 10-22-2006, 12:44 AM

I only see it once.

**Brandon Sheley** · 10-22-2006, 01:07 AM

i see almost all of them with the same set of words

**RedMatrix** · 10-22-2006, 01:24 AM

That's way to F'ing small for me to verify your claims.