I thought I would share all the things I use to manage my forum, keep track of keywords I want to rank for and other things to make running a forum easier and to get traffic to my sites.
I am not going to try to organize them in any particular way since some of these have multiple purposes. Some may not apply to everyone here. Just something I find useful and others might as well. I will add to it as I remember things/find new things.

*Note* Some of these may be platform dependent meaning they will only work with one forum software, in which case it will be vBulletin since that is what I use.

Firefox - Simply the best browser ever made

Extensions I use:

• IE Tab - For testing in IE or viewing a pesky site that only works in IE.

• Search Status - Excllent Web Developer Tool for displaying Pagerank and checking parts of your website.

• IE View - Allows you to right click and open page in new IE Window

• Adsense Notifier - Shows your earnings in the bottom right of Firefox. I absolutely love this extension.

• Tabbrowser Preferences - Customize the Tabs in Firefox even more.

• Customize Google - Changes the way Google works to an extent. Favorite part is that it numbers the results!

vBulletin Forum Software - Simply the best forum software in existence imo. Excellent support and 3rd party programs.

vBadvanced Portal - Very easy to setup portal for the vBulletin forum software. I use it on my Mustang site. While it is not exactly what I want it is the best thing out there for intergrating with vBulletin imo.

Digital Point Keyword and Back Link Tracker - This utility can be used to check search engines (currently supporting Google, Yahoo and MSN) for search engine ranking and track those ranking historically which, as you probably know, is critical when doing Internet marketing for your website(s). Very useful to easily check all your keyword rankings.

Google Analytics - Statistics Tracking Software for your Web site(s). Tracks Uniques, Pageviews, Referring Sources, Content and much more. I absolutely love this program. It is free and has given me so much information to help me improve my web site.

Google Adsense - Monetize your forum with Google Adsense. Get paid everytime someone clicks on one of your ads. My bread winner for my sites.

Metapad - Like notepad, but not as crappy as notepad I use it to work with html and php files.

VBSEO - I use it, I love it and I have found that it has made my life so easy in more ways than just getting me more traffic. Since the urls are SEO friendly Google Analytics can easily traffic individual threads and posts instead of lumping them all into one big showthread result. It offers many utilities to help in other areas of SEO other than just rewriting.

VBSEO Sitemap Generator - A very very simple and easy to use Sitemap generator for creating sitemaps of your forum threads, posts, archive pages and member profile pages. Can be run with or without VBSEO.

Google Sitemaps - The whole reason for the VBSEO Sitemap Generator. Submit your generated sitemaps to Google Sitemaps and be able to track everytime Google downloads your sitemaps. 50,000 links per sitemap file.

Digg - I use Digg occasionally to submit technology news related to the Ford Mustang. While I have never got mainpaged I have still received a decent amount of traffic from Digg and of course the nice backlinks that come with it. Must be technology related news to submit.

MySpace - I use it to promote my Mustang website. See it's page here: Mustang Evolution Myspace. I find Mustang owners on myspace and request to be added to their friends list.

Big Board Admin - If you have a forum with 100,000+ posts join here. Contains lots of very good information from other Big Board Admins.

APC PHP Caching Script - Helps reduce server loads by caching optcode. Amazing results on my server.

Keyword Suggestion Tool - Type in a keyword and see how many times it has been searched for in a month. Very useful for researching keywords to target.

FileZilla Ftp Program - Very easy to use and great interface.

Putty SSH Tool - Allows you to login remotely to your dedicated server and issue commands using SSH.

Trillian IM Program - Allows me to contact people over different messaging services with just one program. Makes my life easier and more organized

FluxAds - CPA type of advertisement. Similiar to Azoogle. I run one highly targetted ad from their program and get decent results with it.

GARS Article System - Very nice article script that is very very easy to customize. Ex: Mustang Articles

WinAmp Music Player - Has absolutely nothing to do with being a webmaster, but music helps me relax and not kill someone when I can't figure something out. There is a song playing on my desktop when I am awake period hehe.

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Ford Mustang Forums - F-Series Trucks

Don't forget Sitepoint!

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vBHackers.com - vBulletin modification resources
BloggerSkills.com - Coming Soon!

Anyone else can feel free to add to this in their own posts of what they find useful. I don't use Sitepoint so I can't claim that one hehe

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Ford Mustang Forums - F-Series Trucks

Great List! Thanks for sharing!

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My Blog - Follow Me on Twitter

Excellent list - thank you for sharing. I'm sure I'll come across something useful here.

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Creative Writing|My Blog

Dude! MetaPad is fking great! Thanks for this! A+ Will buy from again!

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I went to Vegas, and all I got was this Blister. - true story!

This is an excellent thread. Some of the programs/tools you listed I have used as well. I plan on checking out several others though too. I'll add one of the tools that I use to the list.

Speed Typing - This free application allows you to have several common phrases saved in a clipboard style window. You assign each phrase with a keyword (i.e. AF1) and when you type that keyword anywhere, it will paste the phrase that belongs to that keyword. It's a great tool for moderating forums when you possibly would have to say the same thing to several members over time.

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Mark Blair
NowParenting - "Parenting Discussion Community"
HostHideout - "Where Professionals Discuss Web Hosting"

That is a pretty nifty tool

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Ford Mustang Forums - F-Series Trucks

Great post Bama, rep added

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Well I thought it was cool

thanks for all these links some great things some i already use and some i will be sure to try out thanks for this!

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