Customizing SMF > Building Your Community and other Forum Advice

Help, forum dying

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Glennyoung:
We have a problem with our forum. People join, never come back. We have more than 50 members, it is a cattle forum. People join and never come back. People ask questions and no one answers them. We built his forum to get discussion going on our specialty cattle. Members mean well, mean to come back, just forget.

I really wish when someone posted a question, simple forums would email them notification of the question. I think then we would get many to come to site to answer the question and have discussions on the subject. I was told that this is not possible with simple forums.

Any ideas to alert members? Have thought of a newsletter email to members, but that may be too much work listing questions that need answered. Right now YahooGroups seems much better than a forum has been, because when questions are ask, members get notification ASAP and questions get answered very quickly. The forum on the other hand lets us achive questions and answers much better.

Ideas?

ApplianceJunk:
Hi,

Could you post the link to your site. I would like to take a look.


--- Quote ---People ask questions and no one answers them.
--- End quote ---

As the forum owner that's going to be your job, at least to start with.


--- Quote ---I really wish when someone posted a question, simple forums would email them notification of the question.
--- End quote ---

There is a notify button for each board.
Once you click it you will be notified via email when a new topic is posted in that board.

Glennyoung:
hxxp:www.HighlandCattleForum.org [nonactive]

This is the site. In setting this up, we were hoping others that knew more that us newbies would answer the questions. But we administrators ask more questions than we have answers for. We get traffic, most are spammers & we filter them.

Problem is no discussions are really formed. We were hoping for lots of people particapating and making it a place to share information about our breed. Exciting thing is google has picked up on our site and questions/answers are listed, normally first page. Sometimes it just feels like it is the two of us debating and answering our own questions with 50 members just reading. But that is not really true, most I think sign up and never come back.

I need a way to remind members that we are here and need them to use us. We have thought of a newsletter and listing questions of the month. We have thought even to close forum and reopen on Facebook, seems we get answers faster there. I am just looking for ideas to get members back to site and participate.

Any help you have is appreciated.
Glenn
BTW - I hate the verification thing.

nend:
Hi, I am noticing allot of the images and css is missing. Basically it is pointing to another domain. Did you switch domains recently?

You may have not notice the images and css gone, they may be cached in your browser.

To fix simply go to your admin panel > Server Settings > Database and Paths and enter you information.

I am thinking this is why your forum activity declined.

*edit

Forgot one path to fix also

Themes and Layout > Theme Settings, scroll to the bottom of the page and there is path information to be updated there also.

kevinc_63366:
Thanks for the recommendations.  I'm the other co-admin on highlandcattleforum.org

We did indeed change our URL, but that was over a year ago.  I've checked all the settings you recommended and they look right.  That said, once in awhile I see the problem you are referring to.

All the maintenance runs clean with the exception of PersonalMessage.template.php being version 2.0 instead of 2.0.2.

Any suggestions?

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