My Tips for Building Active Community!

[shanksta13]

Really like your forum shanksta13!
how do u place a image for each board (the basketball, baseball, etc.)?

i would really like to apply that concept to my forum
http://www.swampratracing.com/forum

Just use the Images on Board modification.  You can find it here:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=246022.0

[sreisenb001]

good info I will be using it soon...

[sreisenb001]

got it to work. i just deleted most of it... check it out
www.mnsportscentral.com

[alex30]

good info I will be using it soon...

let me see your forum.

[sreisenb001]

good info I will be using it soon...

let me see your forum.

http://www.mnsportscentral.com/

[Galaxy Computers]

Alex the "Post as Alternate User" mod doesn't work for the new version of smf.

[aldo]

I agree with 2 and 3 a lot... When you have a few posts and a lot of boards, it is overwhelming... Also Promotion is good, without it, people wouldn't know you existed XD

I don't know about #1 though. My forum is still starting out... At least I think it is, I am still the majority of posting topics but my members are slowing to start posting their own. Doing something like #1 seems kind of like lying to your members...

[S.Nieves]

Awesome info!

I am still working on the forum, but mostly the people signed on for now are people I got from myspace.

I use a myspace adder program, then "google" search those that may be interested in being my friend, so I would type dog, kennel, dog breeder, animal shelter etc...

(Myspace has been up for like 3 weeks or so.. close to 2k friends who can potentially be interested in my dog forum since they are in the criteria from when I first added them.. ) If its a music forum, search for musicians, djs's, artist or "music people" etc... when asking them to add you as your friend. Be careful who you bug because they will mark you as spam, and your account will be deleted by myspace. Also use a legit program.
www.myspace.com/doggeekz

Then I post bulletins and and announcements. Like I said I am not at that step because my site needs more content and working on a logo/banner for the site before I start inviting people to the site.

www.doggeekz.com

S.Nieves

[alex30]

S.Nieves once you get more members let me know we can exchange our links with each other.

[S.Nieves]

alex30, I checked out your site. Very cool!

Heres a site where a couple of my friends do some moderating.

www.reefcentral.com

Give me like 3 more months and we will definitely exchange links. I plan to add a section for other pets.. Ill add you in there with a link back.

[alex30]

S.Nieves that forum rocks. Admin definitely used threshold to amazing numbers, have you seen those members? There are thousands of them, I prefer not to go that big. Thanks for showing it.

I'll wait for you then, keep up!

[alex30]

sreisenb001 nothing to say, you're at PR2, keep working on posting your links on related sites.

[sreisenb001]

pr2?

[alex30]

Pr is actually your site visibility on the internet.

There are many things that you will learn about it.

Please google what's website pr and you'll get tons of info on this.

[sreisenb001]

hey thanks I had never heard of that before

[alex30]

Do reasearch, those are important things to know if you decided to jump into this.

[phpMyTony]

Thanks for your great advice!

[weisus]

Excellent tips Alex, thank you for sharing.
Question: Do you get a lot of spammers coming to you from Craigslist? I'm promoting a community forum and I know that my local CL is full of spammers-do you think that it would be wise to advertise on CL for this type of forum?

[alex30]

CSS you welcome mate.



O absolutely weisus!

I see you got a lot of boards there, try to post in every state if possible so people will join and see that there is a specific spot for them in a board that belongs to their region. I noticed that you also have a board for moderators. If you need moderators, make ads and post them on cl as well. This works for me and should work for you.

We have no spam from cl, only pure people register who want to learn new things.

[weisus]

Alex,
Now that's what I was hoping to hear, thanks again for the great advice!

Just a thought...your thread seems to be becoming a bit of an advice forum in itself, moreover, you seem to enjoy it; perhaps a link to your new "advice" forum would be in order???