Creating an online community without the community?

[Niteblade]

Thanks!

[metoh]

I must say, you really have to wait patiently for such miracles to happen.

My forum's been around for 1 year or so.. after 6 months we only have 150 members despite advertising it, pulling people from msn lists to join all that...

I became a little frustrated, but my administrator said: Wait, and they will come - Magic Sentence.. Now we have more than 600 members and at least 5 new accounts each day and I am really thankful.

[Holley]

The best way to gain members is to have people posting stuff thats worth looking at ... I did a 'launch' to my site (posting on related forums and emailing anyone that might be interested), within a couple of days I've got 21 people online at one time, just need to get them to register

This new SMF forum is my second one, the first is a now an established phpBB board (heavily patched), the experience with that was that once I'd got 10 or so enthusiastic posters other people wanted to join in ... once it was past that point it kept growing without needing my input.

[Coldfx]

120 Members in 3 weeks? 

I haven't accomplished that feat! Nice going!

However, if you are denying guests from reading your forum, you are also denying search engines from reading your forum as well. However, if you don't care about search engines and the like, then coolness.

Meh, I've reached around 350+ in under a month of setting up 1.08, moving to 1.1RC3, then 1.1.  The trick, is building LOYAL and ACTIVE members..Around 100-125 I deleted because in 2 weeks, they had 0 posts.  Only 1 of those re-registered with the same e-Mail/Username/under the same IP.

[_torero_]

nice, very nice post (the first one) and very true as well.

Some people really take weeks and weeks to post. I have been active for a long time at a motorcycle forum and I remember people telling how they were following the posts for weeks and weeks before they actually said anything.

But one thing is clear, with good mood, nice topics, and a serious commitment to your site everything is possible 

[kfander]

I don't claim to be an expert in building community but I've hosted BBS forums before the Internet and have a fairly busy local SMF forum (or it was busy until I tried to move it to a new server some ten hours ago and got nowhere), and with every new forum I've gotten past the uncomfortable beginnings by creating several accounts that only I had access to and carrying on some conversations with myself, sometimes even arguing with myself. Yeah, it might be dishonest but very few real people are going to join an empty forum and take the time to start a conversation. However, they will join in on an ongoing discussion.

Once the forum gets going, I let most of these accounts lie idle but keep a couple of them active in the forum for those days when it needs a boost.

[Niteblade]

Actually, this practice is highly recommended to begin a slow forum.

[ormuz]

Thanks, just what I need to read!

[RODEOSOLSTICE]

Great thread! Thanks for sharing. I'm one week in to my new forum, and it's going good!

Mine came out of a splinter from a much larger forum - people needed a looser place to hang - people post between both boards - seems like a friendly diversion for those people that needed a place to play around from the more formal board!

Can I shamelessly plug my forum?

solstice-forum.com/forum/

[khoking]

I have recently built up three SMF forums for three different target groups.

First is targetted at my university's student...after putting up invitations through emails and friends, I got some members to join. After few months...it becomes idle now. No new member and no new post. Things have becomes quite static in that forum... www.utmskudai.com

My 2nd forum is targetted on Leica camera users. I setup the website at www.leicauser.com and hoping to get some members to join. However, there is already a very big leica forum in the internet...hence nobody join my group...yes...zero member and zero post.

My 3rd and latest SMF forum just born on the 26th Dec 2006. This time I decided not to use Tiny Portal as I can't find support for SMF 1.1.1, and there are very limited skin from Tiny Portal. I setup the site for a specific target group: Pentax Camera Users, and have my website at www.PentaxWorld.com. It took me quite a while to think of the domain name, and I am glad that this one isn't registered yet. There isn't any big or famous Pentax group that I can find during that time (now I know there are some out there existed already), so hoping that my site can be of a success. I set it up within a day and send invitation to friends and members of my other photo forum. Now after few days since its launch, I have managed to gather some members and people seems participating in the forum as well. I am putting up a competition in the forum to encourage people to post and share.

What I learnt is that one must be truly dedicated to his site, must have deep interest in it and administrator should participate in the site himself with commitment. Always be the helpful to answer to others posts or requests. Always post related news and update of the sites, and keep members inform of the latest happenings.

The more I use SMF, the more I like it. I am glad that I chose SMF as my forum software and I think it has big potential to develope! (I just wish it can show recent threads instead of recent posts now...  )

[sedai]

I am going to be using SMF for a new forum at the start of next year...(this year when someone reads this!   ) and I found that what is mentioned in this thread to be so true.
I run a couple of other forums and I found that at the start, there was on one joining but after a couple of months self advertising then the members did start to come in.

All I can say is be patient when you start a new forum and do not be afraid to post threads. It has been known that when someone has started a new forum for them to create 'alter-egos' members. It may feel a little weird replying to yourself, but if it looks like there is some activity on the forum then people will be more inclined to join.

[perplexed]

We have had over 400 people register in the last year, but we now have less than 200 members as I deleted a whole bunch of members for being inactive.  ie not on the site for several months and/or never posted.  This was after giving them a warning that this would happen of course 

It is good to see a larger number on the memberlist and maybe it encourages other people to join, but the membership number is kinda false if half of them are never there

I wondered if anyone else routinely deleted inactive members, in a world where everyone seems to be trying to get more members?

[Tanks]

The way i see it there are 4 types of members

• the ones that are very active and post almost, if not, every day
  
  
• the ones that are only semi active and post only once or at least not very often
  
  
• the ones that never post anything but they do visit the site from time to time
  
  
• the totaly inactive members that only visited your site the day they signed up
  
  Now i have just passed 1000 members on my forum and i think the number looks pretty cool in the stats, but something inside me says that if they only visited once and never came back then they dont deserve to be members on my fine board. I even email them from time to time asking them to come and visit again and see all the new stuff.
  
  I guess it is a dilemma for many admins.. and i have not desided what to do. Keep or kick ?
  
  When you deleted all those members how did you do it ? Was not being logged in for 2 or 3 month considered inaktive ?
  
  

[Isaac]

I never delete inactive members.  Never.  There's always the chance they could come back, and be an active member again (I have seen this happen), and having more members make your forum look larger and more active.

[perplexed]

The way i see it there are 4 types of members

• the ones that are very active and post almost, if not, every day
  
  
• the ones that are only semi active and post only once or at least not very often
  
  
• the ones that never post anything but they do visit the site from time to time
  
  
• the totaly inactive members that only visited your site the day they signed up
  
  Now i have just passed 1000 members on my forum and i think the number looks pretty cool in the stats, but something inside me says that if they only visited once and never came back then they dont deserve to be members on my fine board. I even email them from time to time asking them to come and visit again and see all the new stuff.
  
  I guess it is a dilemma for many admins.. and i have not desided what to do. Keep or kick ?
  
  When you deleted all those members how did you do it ? Was not being logged in for 2 or 3 month considered inaktive ?
  

In the site rules, we say 60 days and your account may be deleted for inactivity.  Inactivity means firstly, you havent been there in 60 days and no one knows who or where you are. (It is possible to be away from a board for a while due to personal reasons etc) and secondly you have never posted at all, or not for a long time.

We used to enforce this, then we would get people asking friends on other boards, why they couldnt log in and then they would have to reregister. Then they would login in, never come back and go back to being inactive again.  So didn't delete any inactive users for a year, until now.  Then we had inactive users who hadnt been to the board at all for 370 days!

The other problem which was raised recently was that some active members had not emptied out their PM inbox which does have an upper limit, and members trying to contact them were getting 'mailbox full' warnings.  Admins send out a lot of 'PMs to all members' about site stuff, so if the active members werent clearing out their PMs, then the inactive ones certainly werent and that was all accummulating on the server.

So we compromised, sent an 'all member' email - not PM - asking them to clear out their inbox.  Then sent two emails - not PMs- to the inactive members, telling them that we would be deleting their account if they didnt log in and post within a certain time.

The only reason I stopped deleting inactive members previously was because as Isaac says above, it 'makes your forum look large and more active'.  But really it's a lie if none of these people are actually active there, and meanwhile they are getting bombarded by Admin PMs about the site etc.

I hate doing it because you see a big drop in the membership number, but you can only flog a dead horse for so long.  If you are trying to entice them back for a year, and they still arent interested, then I really don't think they should be members, painful though it is to delete them and watch numbers dwindle. JMO

[Tanks]

So it really is like i said; A big dilemma 

Thanks for the reply.. it nice to read some experience 

[Lilac]

My forum got 200 members in a bit over a month due to being 'asked to leave' / kicked out of another, much larger Play-by-post site.  It's easy to build a community when there's a 'need

Not much drives post count per member quite like PBP.  ~400 members (about half active) and 300k posts.

[dsogthomas]

in my forums I already hold a known role in the community... I started hxxp:stuntride.com [nonactive] about a year ago, got a few internet friends to moderate and kinda let it populate itself for 10 months, then once it got to over 500 members I printed stickers and T Shirts to give away. at the beginning of the year another stuntriding forum (the largest) was sold to a big company so they ended up having problems with moderators and new rules etc. Right about then I saw an influx of traffic, so I approached some companies I already deal with as event and rider sponsors and asked them to do giveaways on the site... I have 2 monthly giveaways for the rest of the year (some products are in excess of $300)  in addition we are doing a "Pimp My Stuntbike" giveaway.

my main focus in news and content, since I already have a big role in stuntriding, I have insider access to news and things which I keep on the site.. I also have begun creating rider profile pages within the site with MKPortal as well as Product reviews

all of our giveaways are centered around members adding content to the site, be it posts, images, or reviews, it changes every month.

I also have google adsense and have called in some friendly favors to exchange links with major traffic sites, as well as a writeup in an upcoming issues of super streetbike magazine (which is the 3rd largest motorcycle mag in North america)

plans for 2007 are continue the giveaways and increase presence at events by hiring models, to pass out stickers etc and also hanging banners at events.  Our online store will also be done before this years end also

I do believe that passion is your #1 priority, then content, then just let the site propogate itself a while.. dont try and approach advertisers or anyone to exhange links when you have a dead site

Its my belief

any comments on this or my site?

[Kingdom Come]

Thank you for this great topic.  I have a new community i am launching in about 2 weeks.  It promises to be HOT!  and i will use many of the ideas i got from you guys. SO again, thanks.

The site will be revealed shortly and everyone here is welcome to check it out. We thinks you will like. Cheers! 

[mclane]

We deleted people one time who hadn't been active for 6 months. It was a mistake and we won't do it again. More than anything, there were tons of active members who thought they may get axed.

PA