MyBB Community Forums

Just another Community Tips article for you to read. Hope you enjoy it and leave some comments. I could not really think of a title because this covers a wide range of things.

My article is about forum management and what to expect, what to do and what to be able to cope with. Many people go running into forums thinking everything will be fine and you will have millions of posts within weeks. This will not happen.

The Competition

In every niche you decide to make, there will ALWAYS be the largest competitor. They most likely will be investing a lot of money into the forum and treating it as a business. This means it is there full time job to run the forums and therefore they put a lot into it and get more out. This will make it hard for you if you do not have the millions of dollars to invest on the forum and it growing. Sadly you just have to cope with this one and do not expect to be your competitor.

Time

Time is always key. You go around looking at the big forums like IGN and wonder how they got like that, and more importantly 'when will my forum get like that?' the answer is simple. Those forums have been up for multiple years and with forums like IGN, there is a huge site that was up for years. IGN has been open since September 1996 and therefore has had 16 years to grow into what it has. Your forum will not be anything like that and it will take time for you to get the smallest amount of posts compared. Do not give up, give your forums time to grow and do not be sad if it does not have 1 million posts after a year.

Investments

Investing in your forums future is important. If you do not have a top level domain, decent hosting and a good amount of money to spend on SEO and advertising then your forum will not get very large. Even if you just invest in the minimum you need then it will be better than nothing but I do suggest having money to spend on the future of your forums. Treat it like a future job.

Quality & Expectations

A forum with a decent quality in terms of posts, content and management will do a lot better than ones without. Keep a check out for spam and worthless posts and present yourself as a professional. You also should not expect too much when creating a forum because otherwise you will become disappointed. Have a plan and follow it but do not get upset and annoyed when things do not work out well. You have to start small and build up.

Skins and sections
Many people think using a free skin and leaving it as it is not okay. In my honest opinion as long as the skin looks professional then it is okay. If you get it right people will be joining your forums that are not forum admins so what might be a bad style choice to us admins may not be bad for your members. Sections need to be kept to a minimum and kept active. This will help bring people in to your forums and get them posting content.

Hope you enjoyed this. I could of added so much more but I will do that in another part

I don't know about spending money on SEO, because the results promised by SEO "experts" are often very ambiguous. The importance of investing in your site, however, is a point that cannot be stressed enough, especially when professional hosting can be had for such a low cost. To set up my site on a reliable shared server with a top level domain, I spent less than $40. If you're not willing to spend around that much to get a domain and a legitimate host, you really shouldn't bother putting up a website.

Yeah I agree however I do think SEO is important. Doing it free CAN work but it is much slower and paying for it from some of the trusted sites (not the '1000 backlinks' sort of sites).

I haven't spent a penny on SEO, neither has most webmasters tbh. The most important factor is content and giving "SEO Experts" money will not result in HQ content.

I feel like this article says a lot but doesn't give any advice.

Well thanks I guess.

@Anxiety - A lot of forums do that are larger.
@brad-t - Will try and improve then I guess.

Where would you spend your money on SEO then apart from adwords which is pretty expensive? I see SEO advice being given out here a lot but most of it is so false lol.

I don't agree with spending part on doing SEO. It's not needed. What you need is good content. I never spent a penny on it. And buying cheap backlinks, and such services will only degrade your web's appeal to Google. Initially it may have a rise but for a long time survival, it'll face downsides.