MyBB Community Forums

I have been running a little forum of my own for almost a year. This time last year I was excited and at the same time nearly overwhelmed with the prospect of having a forum that I could shape in any way that I wanted. I made several mistakes, some of which I am probably still making, but I did manage to learn a few things. Next year this time I will probably be thinking that I was an idiot for thinking I had learned anything at this point.

Running a forum is part coding - part people skills; it is about patience and it is about willingness to act when action is necessary. I have seen myself fail in all of those categories . . .

If I had advice for a new forum owner/admin (or someone thinking of starting a forum) it would be to:

• Immediately get acquainted with WampServer, XAMP or some other localhost server and create the forum there before even buying hosting. You'll save money because during the period of time that you are in testing members can't enjoy the site and people don't want to see websites or forums that are 'under construction'.
   
  
• Avoid even thinking about using a free host.
  
  I can tell you from experience that trying to survive on a free host is a miserable way to run a forum. The members become frustrated with bottlenecks and incomplete page loads that you don't always necessarily experience. You may very well experience IP blocks from the host for visiting your own site too often and have to browse your own forum through a proxy :s
  
  If it isn't worth paying $100-$200 per year to host the forum then it probably isn't worth creating the forum to begin with.
   
  
• Avoid creating another 'General Discussion' forum . . .
  
  . . . like I did. I thought I was being cool by allowing my forum to be about 'whatever' but in the end if the forum is about 'everything' then it is about 'nothing.' Luckily, I have a strong user base (though small) that keep my site from being idle too long (90-150 posts per day).
  
  The problem is, I will always have to work and recruit to keep my forum going. If I had created a forum that catered to a specific group then I could work on customizing my forum to that group and 'winning' members of this interest group to my forum.
  
  Take it from me, find something you are interested in and preferrably knowledgeable about and build a forum that you would enjoy and it will be a much more satisfying process.

So, if you had some advice for a new forum admin/owner (or any forum admin for that matter) what would it be?

Disagree with 1, agree with 2 and 3.

(2012-10-01, 07:52 PM)Anxiety Wrote: [ -> ]Disagree with 1, agree with 2 and 3.

While I appreciate your scoring my post, the point of this thread was to share advice that you would give. Maybe you have some tips that others could benefit from?

Yeah sorry I skipped intro, expected it to be your points only. My bad.

The only advice I tend to give owners is be passionate about the niche and use common sense. Mainly the first one, if you're not passionate about your niche you just won't succeed, or there is very little chance.

I have been doing this since 1997 and I agree with all your points.

The biggest piece of advice I can give is do not be afraid of change, especially if you get big and your niche starts to shrink or shift. I learned the hard way that you can not rest on your laurels and you need to be proactive instead of reactive.

My big board was going great for a long time, so good it was self sustaining and self moderating (via reported posts and a good mod staff) and I backed off participating as much due to real life work, etc. When the niche started to collapse due to the economy 5 years ago I put off change (expanding or shifting focus) and thus I fell behind. Members left to where the new focus was heading and never looked back. Now its a game of catch up.

Also, stay involved with whatever niche you build your site around. I can no longer afford to participate in the hobby my big board is about and it makes it very difficult to make posts and keep active.

Well I think the biggest thing is to have some basic knowledge of atleast knowing how to do backups and even making them, lol. Many people don't make backups and this is the most stupidest mistake that you can make.

Another thing is to be open and take all CnC positively, and most of all being original in what you do. Seriously ripping and getting all that "inspiration" will never really make you go anywhere.

Check out your chosen software support forum, and search for "Admin Forums" you will find lots of information and help.

Set up a Test Forum to play around with, that way if you make any cockups you can learn from them without ruining your live forum.

Don't give your forum members things until you are sure they will work properly for your board.

If you do add some new feature and then find out the plugin's design is inefficient or that it conflicts with another more important feature then you may have to hear about it forever

I won't mention the plugin name, but like a year ago I installed a cool-looking plugin that added a really good feature but then after a while I noticed that the server load was greatly increased and then members started to complain of slow page loads.

I traced it back to that plugin but since I could never figure out how to solve the problems for my board I was forced to remove it-- and I am still hearing about it :p

jmo

I think general discussion forums are still possible, you just need to try and be unique and dedicate a LOT of time and work. Nice thread otherwise.

How can you be unique with general discussion forum? Its imposible. I haved forums, wap forums from 2007 (general discussion based) like many others and all forums where the same, just another name. Wasting of time