How To Make A Decent Forum Some great tips on how to make and maintain a good forum

[MiniK 0]

-Firstly, come on, use a decent forum system. Visitors to forums hate advertisements. The best way to guarantee no ads is to host it yourself. There?s loads of free web hosts out there- there?s loads of free forum software, too. So, come on! It doesn?t take much energy to find a good host and upload some files. I think the two best forum softwares to use are SMF(http://www.simplemachines.org/) and phpBB(https://www.phpbb.com/).-Secondly, if anybody is actually reading the topic with the link to your forum in, they must be dedicated to this one, and not many people are dedicated to loads of forums, so watch out. If you don?t get many people joining, don?t cry (like me), just accept the fact that it needs a bit of work.-When someone goes on your forum, they need to be attracted to it. You know, cool features, a decent layout, well that sort of stuff. Also, CHANGE THE LAYOUT!!! People don?t like the default skin. Change it to match your site?s theme! E.g. if it?s a forum about religious things, you don?t have a black theme and loads of pictures of blood and gore. You need it to match what your forum?s about.-OK, to make a forum you need a basic idea. What?s your forum going to be about? Is it an RPG? Who are you aiming it at? You need to think out these things before you even think about registering your forum.-Your forum needs to be well organised. You don?t need 2,445,513 different boards. People aren?t going to want to take a paracetamol every 10 minutes because they?ve got a headache from trying to figure out which board to post in. Organise them!!!-Don?t be an idiot and give out staff positions to ?the first 5 people to join? your forum. It just makes it look crap. Which it is! So don?t do it! Let them work for staff places! Don?t give them away!-Your forum is unoriginal, with twenty million other forums exactly like yours why should anyone pick yours?-Your rules are completely pointless or you have none.

[teknoTom 0]

Copied off another forum:

1. It has no point. Talk does not spontaneously erupt onto any forum left unattended for 5 minutes.
2. It has too many boards. 0x0x0x0x0 still equals 0, and the more noughts people see the more they think your forum sucks, because it does.

3. Your skin is crap. You can't co-ordinate colours, and its all to bright.

4. You are an idiot. Advertising by giving away admin positions doesn't make you any friends, it just deletes your board real quick.

5. You forum is unoriginal. Just ask the person who made the last 'My Forum' topic and see that theirs = yours.

6. No-one cares. We've lived this long without your assistance, we aren't going to jump into your arms.

7. You aren't an attraction. Lots of people aren't going to join to talk to you. You join to talk to lots of people.

8. Your rules are restrictive and pointless. No-one gives a toss about your policy on the 5 worse swear words. It won't stop them using them against you.

9. Your custom smilies annoy the hell out of me, personally. And of course anyone else.

10. You're advertising a forum on a forum. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM?

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Edited October 23, 2007 by teknoTom (see edit history)

[sunzoje 0]

A lot of confusion is created with both the postings. I didn't get what it's trying to say. Is the posting copied from another person or what? i think for a forum to be successful, it's upto the quality of the content and not the number of the users. If there are lot of users but they don't post quality postings, then what's the use of the forum. In my opinion, forum should be informative and entertaining. It should be more of infotainment.

[rs redemption 0]

The one thing that will bring users to your forum is unique content. If you have a forum that is just like ten other forums, then the users are going to be split between those forums and yours. Find a niche, get a hold on what the users want, and make it something worthwhile for them. If you give your users information they need, they will come back. Give them something to look forward to for visiting your site, some useful tools, anything that will give people a reason to use your forum and not someone else's.

 

basically the advice I am saying is, without a loyal user base, you really can't go into a general topic, your forum will look empty. Stick to a few specific topics and categories, then build your forum as you attract users.

[LiveHiFi 0]

I agree with many points of the second post. Sorry OP. Many forums lack quality and user base. There are just too many forums out there for someone to jump on yours. I think the best way to go about creating a forum, would be to gather a following in one way or another, and bring them together using a forum. Then, and only then, can you expand your audience to a variety of people. I am working on a forum right now, but before it goes online, I am going to gather some clan members, maybe some close friends, or just a few prospective individuals, and THEN I will flip the switch and start it going. I also would say, OP, before you give advice, go seek some, and take in the information on starting a forum, and tell posters what HAVING a forum really entails, don't just hand them a tablet to scribble on, teach them LANGUAGE.Still, your guide is much appreciated and it will doubtlessly help people understand how to go about achieving their objective.

[Forbez 0]

Copied off another forum:


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BUSTED! Lol, nice find there. But to the point, those are basics to be honest. None of those tips help really. Each successful forum is succesful for different reasons, you can't pinpoint the reson for why their sucessful.

[ashxu 0]

I guess i'll take these tips into account....

[hitmanblood 0]

I'd like to point out important thing and that is when forum grows larger how do you think you will finance all the needs. Bandwidth files and so on. So I assume that in the later stages you will probably go to some advertising agency not because you would like to earn some money but merely you would like to get all the money invested back.best Regards

[kobra500 1]

Well its not really copied its more like used for inspirations and besides hes added unique content and written it in his own words. Also I'm working on a forum right now!