talk 360

Talk 360 - Powered by vBulletin

I am working on getting some content up on the site and streaming it to my forums. Activity has died down and I am thinking about making less forums because I feel I overspecialized early, any other ideas?

Start with this tip and then report back and I'll go into further detail:
[HOW-TO] Remove "Powered by vBulletin" from Your Page Titles

Note: Most admins seem to agree that keeping the number of forums low for new forums is a good idea until you start building up a significant post count. The goal is to reduce the # of empty forums that will discourage new visitors.

However, you should still have enough forums with good descriptions that you have good coverage on important terms within your niche, and also to give users ideas on what to post about on the forum, rather than leaving it entirely up to their imagination.

We have referred to the effect here as "forum crystallization". Basically, that means allow threads to "form" within a limited # of forums, before expanding the area. Crowding new posts into a smaller # of forums helps to build "bigger crystals" which people will add to. Once you have good size "crystals", you can start adding new forums to build new ones.

I hope I did not confuse anyone with this metaphor. Crystals can be thought of as a signifant # (and growing #) of posts within any sub-forum.

I have removed the power by vbulletin! also thanks for the other information.

Your forum looks good. I think you should consider replacing your showpost links with permalinks, converting your welcome headers to images, adding relevant replacements, and working on your keywords for forum titles and descriptions.

I like the style of your forum titles, but perhaps you can add in some more keywords into the titles and descriptions where possible.

Check out:
Strategy for Optimizing Keywords in Your vBulletin Forum Title and Descriptions