Search Engines

This is an important question. You need to pay attention to words people use when looking for a project such as yours.

This is why DSL is called "Damn Small Linux" not "Zigloo Linux" or "Boofy Linux" -- the "Damn" is so people remember the name and the "Small Linux" is descriptive of what the project is about. It is also a big part of the reason why the project is found for the term "small linux" in the search engines.

At the DSL website we actually hacked all the interactive scripts to make them more search engine friendly. A lot of community software uses session IDs in their query strings, which could impact your search engine ranking. Try to pick software that gives clean URLs. Drupal is a good community application that already incorporates mod_rewrite to give clean URLs. I also wrote the ecommerce script myself to make sure it uses clean URLs even though it is dynamically generated.

I am also a big advocate of having a static index page. This gives you fine control of layout. Another big plus is that if your project ever ends up on a site like Digg.com or Slashdot.org your server will be a lot less strained -- you don't want your site down when you should be getting all that traffic.

That community which you are working so hard to develop is your websites source of unique content. Search engines love unique content, so you need to make sure they have access to what they love.

I mentioned before that it is critical to own your project's space on the web. This means that you really need your project to sit in one central website. Do not allow mirrors to duplicate your content, this will hurt your search engine rankings and also limit your ability to monetize your project.