Top ten secrets for building a successful forum community

[dutchbb]

(This article is mainly targeted at beginner administrators.)

A lot of new forum administrators ask themselves how to build up a successful forum community from scratch. I'm not sure how other administrators define 'successful' in this matter, but I believe it's when traffic increases every week, month and year while revenue (donations, memberships, advertising, products,...) can compensate for the costs. Profit can be a goal, so for some that will be the difinition of success. Anyway, although goals may vary, the same rules apply for reaching them. You need to take the right steps and be committed in everything what you do. I like to share what , I believe , are some of the most important things a webmaster can do to build up a successful forum community. So here's my top ten:

1. Offer something to build up a user base. Content = King. Many new sites are ignoring this rule. Once your site is running and open to the internet, you have to realize that visitors aren't just coming to look at your nice design or cool hacks. There's only one thing, no actually, two things that make users come to your site and keep them coming back and it's answers and entertainment. They want solutions to their problems and if not that, they want to be entertained somehow. Whether it's products, software, services or knowledge- the main thing to remember is: why should someone be at my site when there is competition they can go to? When you have no answer to that, then why should your users come to you? It's also a fact that if you already own a website and user base (for ex. customers from your shop) it's a lot easier to build up your community.
   
   
2. Never keep your eye off the competition. Look at their sites, look at the source of their pages, how they rank, what they might have done to rank higher (or lower). What are the things they did that are a success and what are their failures? Lurn from their mistakes and use their successes in your own site.
   
   
3. Make sure you use the right software. I recommend vBulletin as the best instant community software and vBSEO as the best SEO marketing software. Some beginner admins may find that very expensive, and to be honest I started with free software and build my way up from there. But knowing what I know now, makes me realize that I probably wasted time and money with free software solutions. Don't make the same mistake.
   
   
4. Never go for cheap hosting Your users are all new, and they are not going to wait for a page to load, let alone come back after your boards were offline because your cheap host screwed up again. One of the mistakes I made is going for so called cheap hosting, this can be great for profits at some point but it will backfire and you may pay back the money you saved in users or even advertisers. Finding a good host is not an easy task, it helps to do proper research before you make a decision. Do not go for company's that offer their services in some forum, most of the time they are desperate and offer low quality.
   
   
5. Search Engine Optimization Even when you have a big user base from let's say your webshop, you still need SEO to keep your board alive. People want to find good content on the internet, so why make it hard to find or even hide it? I'm not going in too much detail but there are basically two kinds of SEO: off and on-page. Off-page SEO is every action you can take OFF the pages of your website, on-page SEO is every action you can take ON the pages of your website, simple isn't it? Of course there's a lot more to it, but that's for another article. The take home message is: SEO is here and you can't ignore it.
   
   
6. Keep it simple and user-friendly How many successful boards do you know that use fancy designs, lots of hacks, 'original' navigation or highly modified layouts? Users don't care much about design. Look at some of the most successful sites on the web, you will notice they are simple yet user-friendly. Clear and easy to use navigation, not too many fancy buttons or images and making sure everyone can use the site are the things that can keep users on your site or, when deficient, drive them away.
   
   
7. Listen to your members. Because most of the time they are right, and they know what they like and what not. Some webmasters just don't care about what visitors think of their site, they think they know it all better. Sometimes that may be true, but ignoring everything your users say will sooner or later backfire. Also, keep close contact with your members, let them know who you are and always act in a friendly way.
   
   
8. Be a liberal People like to feel free, even on the internet. That's why its better to keep taboos and moderating to a minimum. Be fair to everyone, make clear and simple rules that everyone can understand. Use vBulletins infraction system so you can monitor behavior without over- or under reacting.
   
   
9. Never stop educating yourself. Education never stops for a truly successful administrator. Whether it's looking for new products/plugins, modifications or design updates, self-education is the key to stay ahead of the competition.
   
   
10. Be creative. Think about ways to make things better, put yourself in your visitors' shoes to see possible problems and find solutions for them.

That's it for now! I hope some of you liked it an maybe got you thinking about your own boards. In conclusion, remember to have fun and stay motivated in what you do and you will succeed

[trungvan]

Thank you for useful information, It really helps a lot of admin out there

[basketmen]

Keep it simple and user-friendly How many successful boards do you know that use fancy designs, lots of hacks, 'original' navigation or highly modified layouts? Users don't care mutch about design. Look at some of the most successful sites on the web, you will notice they are simple, but user-friendly. Clear and easy to use navigation, not too many fancy buttons or images and making sure everyone can use the site is one of the things that can keep users on your site or drive them away.

I am not really agree with this, like alexa says : myspace now is no.1 social site in the world because there is very much cool feature in myspace, compare it with friendster that just have little feature there



But i agree if must compare it with forums.digitalpoint.com
That site looks like very simple (but there is some useful tools inside it), so i recommend just clone your forums like forums.digitalpoint.com

[dutchbb]

Yes I think some sites (like myspace) need to give the freedom to their members to add what they want with all the bells and whistles. But the myspace frontpage and navigation itself is still very simple and user-friendly.

BTW: I hate when I come to a myspace site that has horrible backgrounds and loud music that makes you jump from your stair, those sites drive me away. But those are sites made by kids/teenagers for their friends, so it's not really a problem for personal pages, however you can't do this on a (professional) discussion board, most big boards are simple and/or easy to navigate and keep the extra's to a minimum.

Thanks for the feedback

[Joe Ward]

BTW: I hate when I come to a myspace site that has horrible backgrounds and loud music that makes you jump from your stair, those sites drive me away.

I agree.

[sportsmedjosh]

Wow, what hack is that for the adsense sharing, if someone can post a link to that. It would totally blow my mind. Will it set up a page like that for me also?

[briansol]

Josh, you don't want to do that. Adsense sharing generally only works on webmaster-related communities. I doubt anyone (besides me) has an adsense account on your forum.

[sportsmedjosh]

Josh, you don't want to do that. Adsense sharing generally only works on webmaster-related communities. I doubt anyone (besides me) has an adsense account on your forum.

ha how cool, i didn't know you were on my forum.
Thats an awesome nav bar by the way, he has set up.

[FIM]

nice secrets ty

[tintin]

Thank you

[Endurer]

Brilliant tips there. Thank you.

[jbartle]

All are great points! I think 3, 4 and 6 are the big points though! I always get people asking me to help them with their sites or what I suggest, and those are the 3 main things I suggest at the start (of course number 1, but I figured that was a given). I too started off with a free board, then moved to IPB and eventually moved to vBulletin and vBSEO. I've lost traffic and users throughout my war path but now everything is fine. If I could go back though, I'd definitely be putting up the hundreds of dollars to get the site going like it is now.

Anyways, great tips! I'll have to send people to this page when they ask me what they need to do to make a successful site.

[dutchbb]

Thanks Justin (and others).

[UrbanAU]

This information was indeed useful..
I appreciate it!

[Philipp Herbers]

Thanks for sharing