Froum advice

[MrCjTheFish]

Hey everyone. SO I am looking for some advice.

yes i know my forum is huge, and topics should be compressed. Yes I know the theme sucks.

SO!

Please. tell me what you think I should make my forums boards look like in order to increase activity. MY FORUM IS A GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM

Also, if my theme sucks, please can you post links to themes you think would run well?

my smf version is 1.1.12

I know its my forum, and I can do what ever I want, but I am just looking for suggestions. thanks!

[MrCjTheFish]

Boosting this up. Would really like some advice

[Wally.]

Chatterpit you can't just pick a theme and be "autowin", it doesn't work that way. It's not just about looks. You asked pretty much the same question before and did not heed the advice. Now I realize that it is easy to dismiss advice you don't want to hear from people like me with a small 50 member board but one of the other people that gave you advice was someone who runs a board with 2 ½ million posts on it. If he isn't someone to listen to then I don't know who is. No offense, but you haven't gotten any replies here because the advice would be the same as you got in the last thread. Sometimes you have to be willing to listen to the advice you don't want to hear.

[MrCjTheFish]

I have not posted asking for advice before. But thank you anyway.

[ford1001]

have less boards, you have 100+ member but 16 posts, my forum has 2 members and 80 posts, see what i mean :/ But the theme to me seems bland, nothing jumps out to me, yes having a christmas theme is good seeing as though it is nearly christmas, but it seems bland

[Wally.]

Okay, Chatterpit, I stand corrected - upon review of the other thread you asked about post exchanges to help your site and then ignored the advice of several members. But again you are missing the point. My basic statement still stands - you have already been given the advice you are asking for in the other thread and dismissed it.

Hey everyone. SO I am looking for some advice.

yes i know my forum is huge, and topics should be compressed. Yes I know the theme sucks.

SO!

Please. tell me what you think I should make my forums boards look like in order to increase activity. MY FORUM IS A GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM

ford just repeated the jist of some of it in his post in this thread. I'm not trying to be petty or confontational, I am truely trying to point out something that in the end can only help you. Anyway that's my two cents. Good Luck, whatever you choose to do.

[MrCjTheFish]

went back and read the other thread. Thank you for the advice, I have put it into play.

[Wally.]

A few months ago a couple of admins with much more experience pointed out to me one of the hard truths of starting a forum. It went something like this:

Admins: 'Hey, your site isn't bad but you have way too many boards for your activity level. Get rid of most of them.'

Me: 'But I need those boards, those are all topics I want to cover.'

Admins: 'You get a choice when you start out you can look big or you can look active, but you can't look big AND active. What looks more active 10 boards with 10 posts each or 1 board with 100 posts?'

It was at that point that I consolidated from 35 boards down to 13 and it did make a big difference in how active the site looked. (Honestly, I should have consolidated a couple more and dropped it to about 10 but I was stubborn.  ) Anyway, they were right, in the long run it has helped.

You still have 2 other items that are very important, the first is easy. As mashby pointed out you have an .htaccess issue and he's already posted how to fix that one. Making sure users get a good first impression is important and not having errors when they first arrive will definitely help with that.

The second will take a little more work. As Kindred said "CONTENT is the way to get your site noticed." You don't want to have any empty boards so you need to go out and do some research on each of the topics your boards cover then start writing articles with interesting info in them. At this point it may help to think of your site as a blog in forum form.

[WillyP]

I don't see any indication of a common interest.  What is there about your forum that would draw people in?  For example, I own a motorcycle, so I found a forum that is dedicated to that make and model of bike.  Another forum I joined is dedicated to a particular game.

Most people don't join a forum for random chat with people they don't know.  Every forum I have joined is direct or indirect result of a search for I did for information about a particular topic.

You need to communicate the purpose of the site clearly to visitors.  As others have (more or less) said, 'Content is King'  but the best, or most content in the world won't do anything for you unless visitors know quickly that there is content that they are interested in.

[MrCjTheFish]

Thanks everyone, great advice, definitely going to put these into play

[ApplianceJunk]

Content is king. Most of your visitors will not take the time to register and become members. That does not mean that you should discard them. They are still people that are reading your forum.