My Tips for Building Active Community!

[TheListener]

No problem TheListener !

Forum looks pretty nice. You have two buttons for "Staff List", I would remove one, go to /forum/Themes/your theme/index.template.php and look for "Staff List" code or attach your index.template.php here and I'll remove it for you.

Alex

Firstly thanks for the comments which you have made.

As for the rest of the above we wouldn't have a clue where to look. We have only been doing this since the beginning of March this year.

[alex30]

Anytime TheListener, post your forum updates from time to time, so we can give you suggestions, etc.

[Ryanator]

Great advice. Thanks!

I always thought creating the forum would be the hard part and getting members would be the easy part. I haven't been advertising my forum much lately as I'm working on a new theme. Once the new theme is up I'll have to start putting it out there again.

[ApplianceJunk]

I always thought creating the forum would be the hard part and getting members would be the easy part.

Thanks to SMF creating the forum is the easy part.

Good luck with your site.

[alex30]

Ryanator you welcome.

You got nice forum over there.

[Ryanator]

Thanks guys!

I tried the craigslist approach and got another couple of members over the weekend!

Just as a heads up for people looking to advertise their forum, you can advertise it on my forum. Details can be found here: http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=307271.0

Cheers! 

[alex30]

That's a good way to get some more topics on your forum. I registered and opened a new topic.

Cheers Ryanator! 

[Ryanator]

Thanks Alex. You've got yourself a nice community going on there! A couple of guys I work with have huge aquariums so I'll forward them a link to your site.

[confusion]

I will throw some tips in:
1. if it is appropriate for your forum, turn the post reply notification on.  For a long time, I would have people post questions, I'd answer them and never hear back from the person.  I suspect that wouldn't be appropriate for highly interactive, trivial "chat" forums.
2. as a the forum owner, subscribe to each of your forums so you are emailed immediately when someone posts a new topic.  I have a blackberry, so I can respond pretty quick when someone posts.

[alex30]

You welcome Ryanator.

Thanks for tips Jerry.

It's good to see that someone else also has an aquarium fish community.

[confusion]

I wouldn't call it "established"  

I spend most of my time on this forum: http://www.syslog.org/forum

[alex30]

Not bad, I see many posts, your forum seems to be active.

I doubt that if you would remove upper 5 word ad, you would get more members. My first feeling was... aha owner of the forum wants to earn money. But it's all except to you.

I would also make a banner, let people memorize your forum and come back.

[confusion]

That is good feedback.  I've been running the site since 2000, and what I've found is that there is no "community".  I have 20000 people per month coming from google or other search engines looking for help on a specific topic.  Sometimes they post a question, most of the time not.  Generally, the visitors find what they need (or maybe not) and take off, never to return.  But, I think that is probably it is for such a narrowly focused site.  That was part of my hope for starting fishforu.ms - starting more of a community.

I just recently started with adsense (last fall), figuring that I have poured a lot of money into the site over almost a decade, and it needed to start paying some colo bills.  I had a single link unit on the site until last weekend when I reworked the site.  I haven't yet seen a particular trend positive or negative to posts, visitors or ad clicks.

That said, I think I will take your advice on the top link unit and replace it with a banner.

Thanks for the feedback.

[ArkServer]

I will throw some tips in:
1. if it is appropriate for your forum, turn the post reply notification on.  For a long time, I would have people post questions, I'd answer them and never hear back from the person.  I suspect that wouldn't be appropriate for highly interactive, trivial "chat" forums.
2. as a the forum owner, subscribe to each of your forums so you are emailed immediately when someone posts a new topic.  I have a blackberry, so I can respond pretty quick when someone posts.

its good to turn on notifications but what if you have a moderate large forum and you get like 200+ replies on a topics that u subscribed to? Wow, full inbox

[alex30]

Haha, then it's better not to do that, just revisit forum every day.

[confusion]

its good to turn on notifications but what if you have a moderate large forum and you get like 200+ replies on a topics that u subscribed to? Wow, full inbox

My comment was more of an idea to help with growing a forum.  I, and I suspect many others here, don't have that problem

[TheListener]

Not long ago we had to start the forum from scratch due to server trouble.

My partner has since learnt how to back up the forum.

Am now looking at using a new theme on the forum ( has been approved by the staff) yet the only thing stopping us is not knowing how to use templates, ftp etc.

It's all well people offering templates and how to add them but half the time it is all jargon to us leaving us none the wiser.

[alex30]

Thanks for update. So what theme would you like to add? That's not that hard.

[TheListener]

http://custom.simplemachines.org/themes/index.php?lemma=126

[Seren]

Great tips!

I just started my new forum, it has lots of boards though, personally I like the theme and my layout.

http://www.theultimateforum.net [nofollow]