MyBB Community Forums - Growing a forum from scratch: Ideas and challenges

So I recently made a forum about fashion (spanish), for a blog that I have with a couple of girls. The aim is to create a community and use it as an userbase for commercial campaigns and driving traffic to the blog or whatever we want. I had other forums in the past and I really didn't have a problem, becase it were about topics that I really liked. This time is mostly business.

So the first thing that I did is to create landing pages and positioning for keywords so I can drive that traffic to the forum, but didn't work. People just came to the forum, read or only post twice and never came back. I tried other tactics, like mentioning the forum in the blog, our FB and Twitter, but the results were mostly the same. Your forum needs to appear "populated" if you want people to register and participate.

So I went to r/startups and posted this. I invite you to read the comments. The general consensus is that you have to fake it until you make it. Even Reddit itself did it that way.

So there are two ways for doing this:

The "I'm rich, f**k it" way. Hire people and tell them to post until you reach the tipping point where you tell them to gradually stop posting. A plugin for controlling this will be also needed. Tracking the paid users, how many words they post on a X-period span (day, week, month, etc), how many posts, how many threads they open, and how much $$$ they make based in a field where you introduce a mathematical formula, something like (word*0.01)+(post*0.10)+(thread*0.20). If not, tracking a small amount of users would be a nightmare.
The "Sleeping is for loosers" way. Basically you fake the posts by yourself alone. But a plugin for something like "post as X user" will be also needed, if not It can be a pain in the lime. That's what the Reddit founders did. They didn't have to log in and log out, they did it with their own account and withouth switching between browsers, which is far better, of course.

I have a really little budget, so I'm more in the second way. So my questions are: Does something like this exists? Because I didn't found anything. If not, how much it would cost to develop this plugins? (Yaldaram & Company, I'm talking to you!). If it's not a shitload of money, does someone want to share the development costs?.

I'm waiting for your answers Big Grin

(2013-11-13, 08:13 AM)Yaldaram Wrote: [ -> ]...

Anyone?

This really gave me the idea to make a "busy forum" plugin, can you explain to me more of how you'd think this should work?

(2015-10-23, 07:34 PM)TheGarfield Wrote: [ -> ]This really gave me the idea to make a "busy forum" plugin, can you explain to me more of how you'd think this should work?

For hiring people or for doing it by yourself?

In the first case I don't know what to explain more. In the second cais you just need to have a button y the newreply.php where you can choose "post as" an specific group users (defined in the plugin settings). In the admin panel just an option to create users on a quick way.

Like:

Name:
Pass:
Mail (optional):

Also settings for defining from which group of users you can switch and which group of users can use the switching function.

What you can try (not perfect and does leave an ip trail) is Zingaburga's adminhijack.

http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=268

I use this on my test board for testing settings etc. I guess you could use it to login and out of accounts to "fake" activity.

(2015-10-24, 01:00 PM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]What you can try (not perfect and does leave an ip trail) is Zingaburga's adminhijack.

http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=268

I use this on my test board for testing settings etc. I guess you could use it to login and out of accounts to "fake" activity.

Is this still funcional?

(2015-10-24, 05:17 PM)iagovar Wrote: [ -> ]
(2015-10-24, 01:00 PM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]What you can try (not perfect and does leave an ip trail) is Zingaburga's adminhijack.

http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=268

I use this on my test board for testing settings etc. I guess you could use it to login and out of accounts to "fake" activity.

Is this still funcional?

I said i used it so yes it is Smile

(2015-10-23, 07:34 PM)TheGarfield Wrote: [ -> ]This really gave me the idea to make a "busy forum" plugin, can you explain to me more of how you'd think this should work?

(2015-10-24, 11:01 PM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]
(2015-10-24, 05:17 PM)iagovar Wrote: [ -> ]
(2015-10-24, 01:00 PM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]What you can try (not perfect and does leave an ip trail) is Zingaburga's adminhijack.

http://mybbhacks.zingaburga.com/showthread.php?tid=268

I use this on my test board for testing settings etc. I guess you could use it to login and out of accounts to "fake" activity.

Is this still funcional?

I said i used it so yes it is

This plugin is useful but a bit complicated to use in the way I said on the first post. You actually have to go to an user profile and then go to make a reply. Having a "post as X user" in the newreply.php will be much more confortable, because that way you only need to select an user from a scpecific usergroup list, and post as it was him.

Yea, that is true. There is account switcher plugin (search the mods site) but I have not used it.

(2015-10-25, 11:52 AM)Leefish Wrote: [ -> ]Yea, that is true. There is account switcher plugin (search the mods site) but I have not used it.

This plugin works pretty well. If someone is planning to do the same I recommend it.