TatRing is live!

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   Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years ago

   Happy Tuesday, Hubbers! Our first vertical site, TatRing, is now live. Check it out when you have a chance! If you happen to notice any bugs, please report them in this thread.
   
   We know many of you are concerned about how Pinterest will handle redirects. Paul E. has spoken with the team at Pinterest and they will whitelist our new domains shortly after they launch. This means that you may notice the "suspicious link" warning when you click on one of your pins on Pinterest, but rest assured that it is temporary and will disappear soon.
   
   I'd also like to take this opportunity to invite everyone to follow TatRing on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and of course, Pinterest.
   
   Thanks for all of your feedback and support. We are excited about this upcoming year and hope you are too! Stay tuned for more.
   
   Useful Links
   
   Original Blog Post (Includes FAQ) Announcement
   Original Discussion Thread

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      NateB11posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Very, very cool!

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      TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I took a peak and felt that the front page seems to be more of an advertisement for HP than a website about Tatoos and piercing.  Also, it took me a minute to realize that I had to click on the main page photos to get to the articles within a subtopic.
      
      I think it is a bit misleading to invite people to "write for us", when you have to write for the main HP site before being selected for this one.  It would be better to put a blurb at the bottom that says something like, "If you would like to write for us, click here", and then link to the original site info.
      
      Also, a simple "click on photos to access articles" notation would avoid confusion.  Not everybody is tech savvy who reads internet articles.
      
      After reading a few of the comments here, I am concerned about the fact that you still are letting work slip through that is self promotional and spammy.  If moderators are indeed manually selecting articles, this is the time to eliminate problems like that.
      
      If you don't, you'll wind up with the same issues as before and all of your hard work will be wasted.
      
      Also, I looked briefly at two of the articles.  Both had many photos, but not one photo was accredited.  Nor did I see author bios anywhere.  One was written by a person who only has 10 hubs...that concerned me.  I think there should be a minimum number of hubs a person writes before being allowed to move over to this site.  10 articles and 2 followers does not seem enough to be credible.
      
      Otherwise, I liked the clean look of the home page.

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         There are many people who've taken down most of their hubs and have just a few hubs left here. As long as the hubs are good, I don't see why it's an issue - 1 hub or a million hubs, quality is all you want. You're not creating a blog where people follow individual authors.

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            TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Perhaps, but I think it lends credibility when readers see that the writer has in depth knowledge of a subject.  If someone is going to tell me, for example, how to remove a tattoo, I sure as heck want to know that they know what they are talking about!
            
            The more authority authors have overall, the better the site will do.  At least that is my thinking.

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         Phyllis Doyleposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I agree with the points TT2 brought up. The home page is clean looking - no confusing junk on it - but, it does seem to be missing something,  I can't quite figure out what.
         
         I am very glad to see that previous comments were also transferred over along with the article. I was concerned and wondered about that. It is good to see the comments intact.

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      Venkatachari Mposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I was expecting that the url would be hubpages.tatring.com but it is showing only as tatring.com which may be embarrassing to us hubpages writers.
      Everything rest is okay and perfect. There is no problem in landing or browsing and I have pinned some pins also from the images on main page of tatring and also from the subgroup images.
      I hope the suggestion given by TT2 will make it easier for others who may be confused seeing only images on main pages instead of articles or titles of articles.
      BTW congrats for the launch and hope it makes our sites more desirable and beautiful now than before.

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         hubpages.tatring.com would be nothing but a hubpages subdomain on tatring.com. Definitely not beneficial in anyway. The aim was to form a whole new niche site and not subdomains of any kind. Why is it embarrassing in any way?

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      Sherry Hewinsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Looking at the home page, I can see how having a specialized site like this would be appealing. I have no interest in tattoos or piercings, but I know they are popular. Good luck to Tatring.

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   jansharesposted 7 years ago

   Wow! It looks great, Marina. Congrats on the launch. It is exciting to see something new. I hope my hubs get a category soon. Very cool.

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      jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Marina, this may have been asked already but do Editor's Choice hubs have priority for inclusion on the niche sites? Is it a mute point now? I opted out long ago so I'm wondering how that might affect my hubs being considered at all.

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         DrMark1961posted 7 years agoin reply to this

         I opted out too but many of my hubs have been snipped in the last week in preparation for the move. (Most of them have had the link capsules removed.) Therefore, I do not think it matters if you have opted out of EC.
         One of my most successful hubs, that has been copied several times, including on this site, does not look like it is going to be moved. So I am wondering if a hub has been copied a lot is ineligible for the move?

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            jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks for letting me know that, DrMark.

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         2. STAFF

            Paul Edmondsonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Drmark1961
            
            It doesn't impact selection if your content has been copied or scraped.

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         Christy Kirwanposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         The EC opt-out option was removed when subdomains were discontinued (meaning all Hubs are now eligible to be chosen as EC since no redirects are involved). Editor's Choice Hubs are much more likely to be selected since the quality has already been vetted by HubPages Editors.

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            agilitymachposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            I find this interesting because like Dr. Mark, I opted out of EC.  I don't think any of my hubs have even been looked at for EC.  I have some "Hub of the Day" hubs, so I assume that I have a few hubs that would have been chosen for EC.

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            jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Okay, thanks, Christy. It does make sense that ECs are more likely to be chosen first. I had six before I opted out, will have to wait and see what happens.

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   Since this is a niche site and you want visitors to be the top priority - correct me if I'm wrong. I'd suggest you place the "Write for us" and "learn more" on the top navigation bar along with the Sign in.
   
   - People can see this on every page and would probably want to chip in only after seeing some other articles on the site, not when they land on the home page. Even if they do come with this intent, they would still see it in the top navigation bar.
   
   - You'd directly have the different categories under the intro line. Which would look more professional? Again, visitor first, helping us (by writing content) later. They're mostly here for info not to share info.
   
   Just my opinion. Hope I explained myself right, been a lazy day and I'm sleepy lol.
   
   EDIT: The rest of the site, the articles included look great. I turned off my ad blocker to look at one, not too spammy either

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      Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Totally agree! There are more design improvements coming. Thank you for thinking about this and sharing your thoughts! Glad you like the site so far.

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   Another Addition:
   
   I haven't checked this out on HP either, but for a long article, this one for instance: https://tatring.com/tattoo-ideas-meanin … ss-tattoos the sidebar related hubs should stop scrolling till the end of the article, shouldn't it? If that's not the case, maybe it's something the team should work on. Because if you scroll down on the article the related hubs moves up and leaves a blank sidebar. Waste of space and a loss of traffic imo.

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      Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      That's how it's supposed to work. A few of us in the office just tested this on the latest version of Chrome (same as you?) and don't see the issue. Can you try clearing your cache?

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      Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Do you have AdBlock enabled by any chance? That might be causing it.

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         Venkatachari Mposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         There are 4 ads in between the profile image and related hubs section. But after related hubs part everything is blank on the sidebar. Can't it be good if the related hubs portion also gets sliding along with your article content to the bottom level? It will look nice than a blank sidebar. This is my opinion.

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   paradigmsearchposted 7 years ago

   That site looks darned good! An excellent template!

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   lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

   Just did that, same problem.
   
   Google Chrome    48.0.2564.103 (Official Build) m (32-bit)
   
   What's with the 32 bit, any idea anyone? I have a 64 bit version of Chrome, or so I thought.

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      Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      Why don't you shoot us an email about this at team@hubpages.com, since this is unlikely to be an issue related to TatRing. Thnx!

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         lobobrandonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         Hey Marina, I didn't write to the team, because I only have that issue with the single hub in question. The others it works fine. I cleared cache again just to make sure, still no luck. I guess it's just some other issue, as the rest of the articles work fine.

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            Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            Hi again. I can see the issue now. Reporting this to engineering. Thanks!

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   Rochelle Frankposted 7 years ago

   Looks good. How many hubs in the initial posting of the site?

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      Marina Lazarevicposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      About 350.
      
      edit: Initially I said a little under 300.

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   paradigmsearchposted 7 years ago

   A note to Hubbers... If your hub is on a niche site, your profile page let's the cat out of the bag.
   
   Example, http://hubpages.com/@organisedkaos

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   Glenn Stokposted 7 years ago

   I took a look even through I don't have any tattoo hubs. It looks great and I see that HP staff had put a lot of effort into this endeavor.
   
   I noticed that the comments came along for the ride and when I logged in on TatRing I saw that the links to each person's profile became linkable.
   
   One thing I'd like to bring to your attention, I noticed in one hub that I picked at random ("The Meaning of Tree Tattoos"), that the author was not moderating her comments. She probably has the settings defaulted to let anything go. There were a number of spam self-promotional comments with links to other sites. These comments may hurt the ranking of the TatRing site. Just thought I'd mention it in case it's a concern.

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      paradigmsearchposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      You weren't kidding. Fortunately she has only two hubs on TR. And the second hub appears to be spam free.

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    janderson99posted 7 years ago

    The site is not responsive and does not re-size for mobile devices. Also only about 17 pages are indexed so far. Will Google simply regard it as a folder for Hubpages, as the corporate identity is all over the site and the content/layout is virtually identical. My guess is that ratings for transferred article will not change much in the short term as the articles were originally index on HP and new articles will be originally indexed there as well. I think a brand-new mobile-ready layout could have been better with no HP branding. Time will tell. Are there previous examples which show this 301 approach with articles hosted on the original site works?

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    1. STAFF

       Paul Edmondsonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       Yes, there are examples of sites we know that tried this approach with very good results as well as other highly regarded sources.
       
       I'd love to give full disclosure on the sites we talked to and the folks we got information from, but they have asked us to keep their information private.  We have to respect that request.  At the same time I'm very grateful for the transparency folks provided us on what has worked and what didn't with this type of migration. 
       
       We are going to proceed with caution.  We will launch Pet Helpful in the next few weeks, and assess the results of this first move.  TatRing is a small site, but it should provide us enough insight to assess the viability of how we moved things and to see if we want to make some changes before going forward with sites three and four.

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          NateB11posted 7 years agoin reply to this

          It's awesome the amount of work and thought put into this move. Looking forward to seeing everything that unfolds as the migrations continue.

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    Will Apseposted 7 years ago

    I was impressed by the quality of the pages. I did not see a bad one, which is wonderful. That is probably the most important thing.
    
    The overall design is a bit bleak. But then tattoo fiends seem to like hardcore/bleak blacks and greys: hxxp://www.tattoo.com/
    
    I still think the front page needs some humanity. Maybe a few pics involving faces, rather than body parts.
    
    Words like 'subtopics' in the breadcrumbs rather than something like 'explore' gives it a strangely academic feel.
    
    'Drill deep into TatRing' might be going too far...
    
    I noted that many authors had no bios, some no profile and some no profile pics (those creepy grey-hat-people substitutes for profile pics do not help a page) Nothing wrong with a simple author name.
    
    Many author profiles talk about Hubpage issues in a completely bewildering way.
    
    I saw one strange unrelated link back to HP.
    
    This page has a link to 'Hotel Cleaning Exposed' by someone called 'Borneo Tattoo' on the main site.: hxxps://tatring.com/getting-tattooed/Interested-inTattooing-Lesson-5-Sterilization-Methods
    
    Are the Amazon ads on this page really a good idea?
    
    hxxps://tatring.com/getting-tattooed/The-Australian-Government-Says-You-Are-A-Tattooed-Criminal
    
    Hope it goes well, especially with  the design upgrades.

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    agilitymachposted 7 years ago

    I liked it too.  I also didn't see a bad article.  I thought if I were into tattoos, i would like to spend a lot of time there checking out designs.

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    EricDockettposted 7 years ago

    My two pennies (maybe a nickel):
    
    On many (but not all) Hubs I viewed there appeared to be links to other non-tattoo Hubs in the "Related" section. Right now these links point to HubPages, but presumably when the other sites are launched they will point to the other sites.
    
    Is this a good idea? Shouldn't ALL links to other articles send the reader elsewhere on Tatring, not off the site?  In the original blog post it was mentioned that readers understand sites better when they are about a single topic. This linking seems to run counter to that idea.
    
    Plus, won't we just end up with the same issues we had with the subdomains? I always thought one big reason they were not treated independently was because HP linked them together so thoroughly.
    
    I also agree that the invitation to write for us is quite misplaced. Not the first thing a reader should see!
    
    Otherwise, I thought it looked pretty good. Not as restrictive as I feared, but still conveys a certain amount of confidence that writers know the topic.
    
    Edit: Looking again, most of the links do seem tattoo related, but many do point back to HP, so my question remains.

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       calculus-geometryposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       I also noticed articles on tatring with sidebar links to articles on HP, and in several case the HP article was not well-written, or clearly written by the type of content farmer who chases high paying keywords but has no experience with tats or piercings.  If the HP main site is transitioning into being the site for dregs, wouldn't it be best to not link back to it? Every link to HP is a missed opportunity for an internal link.

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    2. STAFF

       Paul Edmondsonposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       The question about interlinking comes up a lot.  We spent a fair amount of time on this question as well.  We looked at a large site that tried something similar and they interlinked more aggressively and they've done very well.  We went to other sources with more information and from a Panda perspective, linking isn't believed to be a major panda issue unless the content that's getting linked to is off topic and that can cause issues with Panda.
       
       One thing that hasn't been talked about much is the major changes to Panda and the machine learning classification that's going on.  Here is what we hope.  TatRing gets classified as a site that's about tattoos and piercings.  With this type of classification we hope it scores better with the intent of users looking for this type of information. 
       
       We believe that Panda has a significant vertical component now.  In the next few months we will know if these sites have been successful.

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          paradigmsearchposted 7 years agoin reply to this

          The internet will not permit the taking over of multiple subjects by a single entity.
          
          Not talking Google. Not talking any other entity. Not talking conspiracy.
          
          Am talking a sociological, historical fact.

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          janderson99posted 7 years agoin reply to this

          I noticed that the Hubpages category => Body Art, Tattoos & Piercing now includes articles with links to TatRing. In other words, Hubpages(dot)com will become the hub for thousands of links to the new URLs. There will be thousands of backlinks as well. The articles on TatRing have essentially the same layout, look and feel as they did on Hubpages. I suggest that this tactic of retaining Hubpages as the central repository and having the same layout will diminish the likelihood that TatRing and the other new sites will get a Panda-free new, and separate identity.

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             TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

             I agree.  To succeed as independent sites, these groups should not be linking to HP or even use the HP name in any way...otherwise Google will not see them as being independent from the mother site.  It defeats the whole purpose of creating them.  We as writers always have problems due to self promotion, and this basically is the same thing.
             
             Bad idea all the way around, Paul.

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    lobobrandonposted 7 years ago

    I second Eric's statement. The few articles I saw had related articles (not going to call them hubs) on tatring itself. But if there are any that point to HP or any other site (in the future), it should be a no-go. Interlining so much would mean that they are all going to be treated as one big site - again...
    
    Also, the footer copyright, terms of use and privacy policy all point to the HP site, I would suggest making them PDF's or something and setting them apart, no need to create whole new pages. But don't point to the HP domain. Tatring has to be a site on its own, a brand of its own.
    
    We need to do all that it takes to make sure that this works out, if branding is lost in that sense (Which most people will never ever click on), then so be it. That's just my thought on the matter.

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    janderson99posted 7 years ago

    Looks like about 1/3 of the
    Body Art, Tattoos & Piercing (1,054 Hubs)
    have been transferred to TatRing (350 articles).
    What are the authors who missed out intending to do with their articles?

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       TIMETRAVELER2posted 7 years agoin reply to this

       They may not have had time to do all of the transfers but perhaps wanted to get started with this project.

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    paradigmsearchposted 7 years ago

    .
    You obviously know about content farms, Wikipedia and such.
    
    You have made the decision to not compete with them.
    
    Or have you? Secondary is not bad along with the niche.

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    Will Apseposted 7 years ago

    Dennis Publications has a ring of about 30 (big) niche sites. There are links to each of the sites in every footer of every page: hxxp://www.dennis.co.uk/
    
    Every link is dofollow according Seoquake. There are around 40 external links on each page. That is pretty aggressive.
    
    What these niche sites do not do is link out of the site from 'related' or 'featured' type links.
    
    I haven't dug too deep into TatRing but there are certainly unrelated sidebar links back to HP which will be of little value to users and could easily look like an SEO exercise to pass link juice around.
    
    If there was a way to restrict links from Tatring to HP's tattoo category that would probably get rid of the unrelated problem

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       paradigmsearchposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       ehow has been getting away with this crap for years, every site re other. Been going on a decade. Google might wake up or not. Whatever.

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    EricDockettposted 7 years ago

    I'm still thinking about the links in the Related section here, the ones that link back to HP. I understand what Paul is saying, but (respectfully) I'm wondering if perhaps the Team should think about this a little more carefully.
    
    In some cases the Hubs back on HP aren't very good. So, my question is, why would we be linking back to them at all? If a Hub isn't good enough to be included in Tatring, is it really good enough to link to? Even taking Panda out of it, if a reader decides they like Tatring why would we send them off to a poor Hub on another site? (Even HP)
    
    In other cases the tattoo Hubs still on HP appeared pretty darned good to me. So there my question is: Why weren't they included in Tatring?

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       Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       You could have a look at this page: http://hubpages.com/style/tattoos/10
       
       Too late here for me to think about it really...

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    Robikanposted 7 years ago

    I'm quite pleased to have had a few of my Hubs moved to this new site! I am curious, however, if I will continue getting revenue from them. Perhaps I missed a notification email, but this is the first I've heard of the move. Can someone direct me to information regarding how this impacts the authors? Thanks.

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       alexadryposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       "Can I still earn money from Hubs that are moved?"
       Yes. Your Hubs will continue to earn money when they are moved. All of your earnings will be rolled up in My Account > Earnings > Earnings Reports like they are now. The revenue share will not change, nor will the ad layout on Hubs."
       Source: http://blog.hubpages.com/2016/02/02/new-year-new-sites/

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       jansharesposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       Hi Robikan. I've been wanting to hear from a hubber whose hubs have been moved to the new site. So, how's it going? How were your views before and after? Congrats on getting chosen. Paul Edmonson posted that it's going well.

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    Marian Designsposted 7 years ago

    The home page design needs more energy. The title/logo should be much larger and placed where "Welcome to Tatring" presently is. If you still want to say "welcome to," that could be above the title/logo. I agree that "learn more" and "write for us" should be placed beside "sign in." All three could be a little larger.

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       Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

       The home page is one of the dullest I have ever seen. I suppose it is aimed at mobile users, primarily. Fancy home pages only work on desktops.
       
       The layout is fine for site structure (what could be simpler?) But no harm in engaging visitors.
       
       Overall, the whole niche site looks too corporate, generic and, somehow, suspiciously like a scraper site. I would scram if I stumbled across it.

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          Marian Designsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

          What's a scraper site?

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             Will Apseposted 7 years agoin reply to this

             It is a site that scrapes (steals) content from other sites and uses the site for linkspam or other nefarious purposes.
             
             I'm probably being a bit hard on Tatring. Perhaps I should just say that I find the design a bit alienating and impersonal.
             
             edit: If you are wondering what linkspam is, there is no harm in Googling it, by the way.

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                Marian Designsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

                Thanks. I should have searched for scraper, to find out what it means. I agree that the home page is really dull. For tats and piercings, it would seem to me that you'd draw a more colorful, adventurous crowd. The home page needs to reflect that.

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