A Suggestion for software updates

[Nima]

Hello all,

I have a suggestion, first of all, just see these threads:

Win7codecs 3.4.4 + x64 Components

Win7codecs 3.4.1 + x64 Components

Win7codecs 3.3.7 + x64 Components

Windows 7 Codec Pack 3.3.0

Windows 7 Codec Pack 3.2.0

Windows 7 Codecs 3.0.2

Win7codecs 3.0 Beta 5

Win7codecs 3.0 Beta 3

Win7codecs 3.0 Beta 2

Win7codecs 3.0 Beta 1

Win7codecs 2.8.4

Windows 7 Codec Pack 2.4.0

Win7codecs 2.3.1

Win7codecs 2.2.9

Win7codecs 2.2.8

As you can see there are a lot of topics like that, these many topics from many versions of a program making harder to find the latest version at first, for example the final version is 3.4.7 but this version is not even listed & these useless topics have not any visitor any more and just making database bigger.

So, what to do? :think:

I suggest to make a single topic for some very popular programs in Software Update section for programs which not present in Frontpage for any reason. :think:

Like: "Windows 7 Codecs Pack / x64 Components Latest Version" or "Windows 7 Codecs Pack XXX"

The first form does not need regular editing but the second one need user or moderator editing to make the title correct & updated.

In this way, one topic will be indexed in the Google and many people can bookmark that and some other SEO benefits; currently we have many 'Windows 7 Codecs Pack' indexed in the Google.

The second effect is that database will be much smaller and have other like-that benefits e.g. faster loading webpages. ^_^

Or, we can continue in the same way we going now, but, removing/merging the old topics when a new version is posted but this job will need a much time and efforts because there many software updates topics in the forum. :huh:

What do you think? :think:

Thanks,

Nima

[shought]

It's something various other software sites do, but I don't think it's 'us'.

By having every version number in a different topic it is much easier to isolate problems with a particular version. Also the download link will always be in the first post. Should there be a single topic then either the latest version would be in any of the latest x posts or it would have to be updated by the topic author every time, both aren't really 'effective' either. People might be looking for a specific version of Win7Codecs and when they type in 'Win7Codecs 3.4.4' but our title tag says 'Win7Codecs Latest Version' Google will most likely prefer some other search result which does list the actual title, so in terms of SEO I'm pretty sure it's better to have specific titles (then again some people might also search for 'Win7Codecs Latest Version', I'd like to imagine these are some less tech-savvy users though...). The effects on the database/speed are negligible ;)

There's pros and cons to both ways of doing this, but I still think the way we do it now is slightly better than having one topic for one software.

Thanks for the suggestion though, it's certainly worth looking into some more but I don't really see any way we could improve this without creating a sh*tload of extra work for the staff...

[LeetPirate]

I dunno man, doing this might take away from community contributions. We already have a few popular codec packs on the frontpage that are maintained by staff. My personal view is that topics like this give members a chance to create their own topics and share what they like with the community. As long as people create the topics with sensible names along with the version numbers it will be indexed correctly and efficiently. Also now we have the use of tags in the forum to assist with indexing. If perhaps the latest version of a software isn't listed we encourage members to create their topics and share it; and for frontpage apps of course we have the dedicated forum area for members to notify us of updates.

:( I take 2 hours to type.