Running a forum? Best practice thread

rusvik

rusvik

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Jan 21, 2011
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Hey,

I've just finished installing a phpbb forum with SEO module and whatnot for one of my larger travel sites. Also made sure to add a security question since Xrumer was posting threads within minutes of the forum going live. Now I realize I have no idea on how to run a successful forum!

I figured I'd just start out with one forum category to begin with and then expand. Along the way, I assume I also need Moderators (which I don't know how to set up in phpbb).

It would be great if those of you who run forums could contribute some advice!
 


Lose phpbb, go with vBulletin or xenForo or even mybb if you want a free forum software.
 
Yeah, I've just recently done a decent amount of research and it seems xenforo is awesome at killing spam. I have yet to find out from personal experience so take it for what it's worth.

I too would love a "how to best run/start a forum thread"
 
If you're not running vBulletin software, and you don't have a team of real and fake posters ready to keep the forum active.. If you don't have a custom or nice working theme with the right categories and sections.. If you don't know where to advertise your forum to gain new members..

I'll save you some time and say: You are going to fail, just stop.

I've ran a few wildly successful forums in the past, yet I don't anymore too much of a time-suck. But you have to really know what your doing, I say this to everyone 98% of new forums will fail. Even established forums fail all of the time, regardless of ranking.

You could be ranked #1 for Nissan forums, but if you have 1-3 active users, and the #2 spot has 300,000 members, you're forum is never going to grow unless you know how to get it active. Advertising your forum doesn't equate to shit, the # of active posters, threads, topics, etc. is where it's at.

If you can afford the $160? Price for vBulletin, you're not going to have enough $ to invest in the forum to get it started. If $160 hurts your budget, you're going to struggle and 99% of the time you'll fail. It's just that simple.

Do you know how to monetize the forum? Have you researched this? If not you're going to get killed in bandwidth and host charges if you don't. Forums cost a ton of money to operate, they are a major money-suck in costs if you don't have ads to create revenue back.

Dedicate the next 3 years in research to educate yourself and you'll have an 4% chance of being successful.
 
Madin said:
Lose phpbb, go with vBulletin or xenForo or even mybb if you want a free forum software.
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Yep, this. PHPbb is not scalable and lacks some of the most basic features, you'll be glad you got vBulletin instead in the long run. If you're broke just go download a nulled version for free from some torrent site.

I said in another thread a while ago that one of the best ways to get people to sign up and contribute is to basically set up a squeeze page to grab people's emails. Then mail them with an autoresponder with emails to register on the forum and to post, etc. etc. Works well.

Even vBulletin is really behind when it comes to usability and shit so getting people's emails and getting them to register that way is a lot easier.
 
cardine said:
Do you actually have a plan to get people to join the forum. Because everything else is pretty easy by comparison.
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I'm just starting the forum bc it is related to the niche my blog/site is in, and it's a newer sports/competition related niche that gets 500k searches a month but the only forum is the official one which, surprisingly, sucks. I planned to use the blog somehow to push them to the forum haven't really decided exactly how i was going to go about doing that... think i will just take the above advice, capture the email and then "nudge" to the forum. That way I won't miss out on the email if I succeed in directing them to the forum.

thx for the tips so far.
 
another question.

say the niche was blue widget, but the term blue widget was a copyrighted term. I registered "bluewidgetforum.com" and "bluewidgetforums.com".... should I just use bluewidgetforum.com and assume they won't get pissy? or register blueforum.com and redirect the two domains containing the copyrighted terms to it??

I guess my question is (and it's a noob one) can I rank bluewidgetforum/s.com and when someone clicks through have them redirected to blueforum? I suppose I don't really understand how a redirection works. Can I have the user redirected but have google still crawl/index/rank the site as if it wasn't redirected?

It's a pretty big decision, the bluewidgetforum.com is already ranking first page after just throwing up a short article on WP as a temp place holder. But, on the flip side, it shouldn't be that hard to rank blueforum.com either and I wouldn't have to worry about copyright issues. It just seems like such a waste to not use the 2 .coms I snagged. Any suggestions on how to best take advantage of having them while avoiding CR complications would be greatly appreciated.
 
lose lose win said:
I'm just starting the forum bc it is related to the niche my blog/site is in, and it's a newer sports/competition related niche that gets 500k searches a month but the only forum is the official one which, surprisingly, sucks. I planned to use the blog somehow to push them to the forum haven't really decided exactly how i was going to go about doing that... think i will just take the above advice, capture the email and then "nudge" to the forum. That way I won't miss out on the email if I succeed in directing them to the forum.

thx for the tips so far.
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My plan was just use popup with competition for first 50 members to win something. Then post on Facebook group as well, then just let Google do it's job and get the long tail search.
 
rusvik said:
My plan was just use popup with competition for first 50 members to win something. Then post on Facebook group as well, then just let Google do it's job and get the long tail search.
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That will fail. You'll end up with 50 users who don't post, who just posted once / whatever the terms are for the competition, and left.

Fool proof forum starting guide:

  1. Build a website in the niche, provide valuable content and collect email addresses by giving something away free. Follow up with an auto-responder course, and keep the subscribers "warm" by regularly sending them quality content.
  2. Once you reach say 10,000 subscribers. Create your forum. Send out a mass-mail to all of the people who are at the end of your auto-response chain, and add emails into the auto responder now promoting the forum.

If you do that, you'll get tons of people onto your forum all at once, who are interested in your niche, and have a relationship with you already.

If you don't want to go that route, you're going to have to pay a load of people to post regularly on your forums and start getting conversation going. That's a real grind and IMO both more expensive and less effective (paid posters are never as passionate about a niche as the people who have subscribed).

Another way is to build up massive amounts of traffic to a site, then launch a forum. You need a ton of traffic to get an active forum going quickly though.

So far as categories go, start off with 1. You want your forum to look active. 10 categories with 5 forums in each will make a new forum look like a ghost town.
 
the best thing i did to my forum was closing it form public and making paid membership. less crappy people, less content too but at least just solid and legit stayed. so less time wasted browsing dumb threads
 
The hardest part of a forum is kickstarting it. Nobody wants to post on a forum with like 7 posts on it. So you either need a massive list and a launch-type scenario or you need to brute force it with fake content. Both are tough but necessary.
 
I'm getting ready to launch some sister forums to my main one, and am switching to IPB vs. Vbulletin as I can't stand what VB has become since 4.x (both as software and as a company) - curious why some of you all are still on VB vs. anything else - still consider it above all else?
 
CreationNation said:
I'm getting ready to launch some sister forums to my main one, and am switching to IPB vs. Vbulletin as I can't stand what VB has become since 4.x (both as software and as a company) - curious why some of you all are still on VB vs. anything else - still consider it above all else?
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Yeah vB4 for most part was a bit of a disaster... 4.2 seems to be a bit better from what I've seen and vB5 looks great from the screenshot's they've posted.

I had a look at IPB before I chose vBulletin and I just didn't like it, another reason I've not switched away from vB is because of the custom plugins I've got.
 
I have never really owned a successful forum, but I think it should just be unique and useful - like any other site that you would want to make popular.

But since you made this thread looking for some more precise advice, a tip for you would be, at least at the beginning, to really verify thoroughly what your users post... because if someone finds even a little bit of spam in a small / new forum, chances are he will never come back.
 
vBulletin is really the only ok solution for forums, in my opinion. other "tips" are quite obvious - niche, social media, blah-blah-blah
 
Monetization forums with e.g. Adsense is a #fail

just s speaking from personal experience :( not saying my forum could not have been monetized better, even with adsense, but generally speaking #fail :)
 
contract said:
If you're not running vBulletin software

If you can afford the $160? Price for vBulletin, you're not going to have enough $ to invest in the forum to get it started. If $160 hurts your budget, you're going to struggle and 99% of the time you'll fail. It's just that simple.
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CreationNation said:
I'm getting ready to launch some sister forums to my main one, and am switching to IPB vs. Vbulletin as I can't stand what VB has become since 4.x (both as software and as a company) - curious why some of you all are still on VB vs. anything else - still consider it above all else?
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Madin said:
Yeah vB4 for most part was a bit of a disaster... 4.2 seems to be a bit better from what I've seen and vB5 looks great from the screenshot's they've posted.

I had a look at IPB before I chose vBulletin and I just didn't like it, another reason I've not switched away from vB is because of the custom plugins I've got.
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anuj29 said:
go with vbulletin - it rocks.. i just love the outlay
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arcadefire said:
vBulletin is really the only ok solution for forums, in my opinion. other "tips" are quite obvious - niche, social media, blah-blah-blah
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XenForo > vBulletin 4 & IPB

It was started by some of the people that made vBulletin great in the past.
 
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