Guide: A Few Forum Tips.

[[Hurricane]]

Guide: Guide: A Few Forum Tips.

Topics I will cover during the reading of this guide:

-Choosing a Name.

-General Forum Qualitys.

-Advertisements/Getting the word out.

-Theme Descision

-Your Forums "Team"

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"Choosing a Name."

The Name of your forum is the most important part that sets it apart from everyone else and gives it a unique quality in my opinion, It's always important when choosing a forum name to have a good idea in mind of what topic your forum is generally going to cover, with that said it may also do you some good to explore some already existant forums of the same type of forum yours is going to be, take a look at there name, after you have a examined a few forum similar to what your forum will be about then you should start in the process of choosing YOUR forums name, when choosing your name keep in mind your forums name should be unique, easy to remember, catchy.
In other words it should just be short & sweet is how I'm going to put it, it's also a little off topic to this matter but you need to be extra careful when choosing your forums webhost, you need to examine each one your having thoughts about using very cautious you need to avoid over sellers that say you will have "unlimited everything" which is totally not true, but with knowing that you should have a fairly good idea in mind of what your forums name will be.

"General Forum Qualitys."

General Forum Qualitys another very important detail when making your forum, I'm going to start off with your forum Boards, since these are where the main activity is going to be you should choose them carefully & have a wide range.
A bit more detailed of what I mean by "Choosing Them Carefully" like I said in the topic above about choosing your name, look at some similar forums study some of them & give your boards a unique name or unique qualitys, such as adding Color to the name of your board or Adding a neat image under the board that resembles what the board covers.
More Detailed into "Having a Wide Range." when creating your boards pick a good short & unique name you shoud have a good wide range of boards to discuss but nt to many as to where you end up making so many boards there are more boards not related to the topic of your forum than there are focused on your forums main topic, also unqiue can play a small role in having a wide range of boards, have a good unique name and wide range but also make sure all the boards names are unique don't make a few unqiure and quit.

Now lets go into a little about Posts, now that you have your boards done and looking good you need to make sure when your forum open you make posts evenly into all of your boards and not just focus discussion on one specific board, if this should happen don't let it get up and make some interesting and useful posts to the boards that are being ignored, another very important thing is you should ALWAYS when making posts/topic make sure your posts are not one sentence or one word or just those smiley replys, add more content to your post/topics and keep your readers interested if the topic is going dead then you probably have failied to add good/not enough content to your posts, it's also good to use proper grammar and spelling though some people don't mind it.

Now I wanna go into Ranks, ranks are for some reason what people try so despriatly to get and will do what ever it takes to get it, when someone is spamming your forum to raise there post count, to aquire a rank you need to confront them and let them know that it's just a rank it doesn't make you any higher or mightier than anyone else nor does it intitle them to special privlages, on the other hand if some one is doing this but there posts are meaningful and contain good content in my view they should be rewarded.
Ranks are a way to increase activity but a way to prevent spammers from spamming to get a rank only make on such as just "Forum Name Member" and once they realize there not going to get a cool rank they won't try and spam again but don't get me wrong I choose my rank names carefully theres no reason not to have more than one because there are ways to stop spammers, so it's good to have catchy rank names, another tip I almost forgot is it's nice to have custom images instead of the standard star.gif.

Permissions, be very careful when choosing them this could cause alot of problems and potentially cause something to happen to your forum, most permissions you should not give to regular members is allowing them to edit other people posts, remove them, remove there polls, move their topic, ban other users, or anything that's in the catgorey of giving them permission to "Moderate" the forum.

Neat ways to spark a little activity, one word Contests, when I first joinied forums I loved them and done anything to win them even if the prize wasn't all that great but if you plan on doing a contest make sure it's something fun doesn't take forever to do, and members will like, be aware this is another target for the spammers, make sure to keep an extra close eye out when doing a contest for those pesky spammers.

"Advertisements/Getting The Word Out."

There are alot of ways to advertise your forum you can add it to various search engies such as google, yahoo, and many more you can find forums that are similar to your that allow you to advertise on there forum, the usuall way would be every forum you join is to put a link of your forum in your signature there, you could also run a member refferal contest on your forum which always turns out fairly well, tell your friends, and family that are interested, if your forum is a "Buissness" you could find local stores or something and places an ad on them if they alllow you.

"Choosing a Theme."

My Favorite part there are really only two ways of doing this,
The first way if you don't have any money availible then option two is what you need to read, how ever if you do have some spare money find a good designer to design a custom theme exclusivley for your forum also bare in mind that it WILL NOT be cheap creating themes are VERY tireing and time consuming, when choosing a designer BE CAREFUL or you may get rippd off DO NOT pay in advance that is a very bad idea if you have found a designer you think can suit your needs, ask for examples of there work how long they have been designing maybe even ask to speak with some of their former customers, that should get you a secure and honest designer.
For those who don't have any money the only thing you can do is get one of the themes made here by the designers here, and don't get me wrong I think there all amazing but buying a custom theme is much better in my honest opinion, but if you have to resort to getting a theme from here look at it carefully, choose one that matches your forum, and get some opinions from your members and others.

"Your Forums Team."

I cannot stress enough on how important that you need to be super cautious when choosing someone to be apart of your forums staff don't just give a member staff because they made a post, keep in mind your giving these members special privlages over everyone else and some of the privlages that they recieve could turn out a nightmare for you if this member turns out to be a bad person your forum could end up getting stole, or just have all of it's content deleted, and possibly having your members harrased
The best people to choose when picking people to be apart of your staff is take a look at there posts for good grammar spelling and content, also if there a constantly contributing member who obeys the rules and respects everyone, or this is not the best way but you could set up a board for "Staff Applications" and write up an Application format when writing it make sure to include that it must be fairly long over two paragraphs, that should eliminate most spammers, include such questions as "What will you do to improve this forum", "Why do you want to be apart of our staff", "Why should I choose you to be a staff member over other members", just include questions that make the member filling out the application answer true so you get someone that not a fake who looks to spam and destroy people forum for fun.

I will be adding more, but if anyone has suggestions on what they would like added please tell me I'm open to any and all comments and constructive criticism

-[Hurricane]

[_xXxSLASH3RxXx_]

Nice i advertise on youtube though xD

[[Hurricane]]

Hello,

Wow I cannot belive that I forgot to add that in there yes it is also a good idea to advertise on youtube, but I usually when I do this I don't get much traffic from it but still a good idea indeed, I will be sure to add that in their later tonight thanks for the mind jog.

-[Hurricane]

[_xXxSLASH3RxXx_]

O_o Myspace to!