Hi, I've read the forum building posts, but they havn't really given me any clear idea's of how to build a forum. I've had the name findinlondon.com for some time now and rencetly found it had a google PR of 6, which is a completely mystery to me because its just been a domain name without even a landing page for over a year! But I wanted to build a forum for londoners, where they could discuss everything to do with London. Hell its the kind of forum I would love to post in, problem is I can't figure out how to get the thing off the ground! Any ideas are greatly appreciated!! thanks. flashculture.
Looking at the forum / site, it already had forums and sub-forums there. Now you need to get it started by posting threads in there and getting people to reply and add to the discussions. For this you can hire forum posters or start a competition by attracting londoners to come and post on the forums. You need lots of traffic and users posting regularly to get it off the ground.
HMMM, i always like the idea of wikis instead of discussions... start a wiki and let people debate over how to define bars, parks, and stuff like that. a different and lively take. but, it you dont't do anything with that PR6, i'll buy it!
I'm not trying to re-create fridaycities, because what I'm trying with findinlondon, is just a place which is about information, knowledge and discussion of London's issues from the people who actually live there. Fridaycities looks like a cool website, but its not the direction I want to go in. I travel through London a lot, and I see things that piss me off, that excite me, and things I don't understand and I would love to have a place where I could go and discuss that, and which is not about me personally, but is about what I gotta say. If that makes sense! I havnt' got any money to hire people to post, and to be honest I would rather people post in there because they have something to say rather than, they are paid to do that.
I do think you have too many categories that just aren't what Londoners want to talk about. (I work in London by the way). I dont think people would really be interested in the shopping section but maybe that's just me. I would keep the general category at the top but get rid of parks and weather as they seem unnecessary. I also think that business, history, exhibitions and automobiles are not needed for now. Maybe you can add them in later. At least this makes the forum a little more compact and that is what you need if you are going to build up critical mass. Now to the hard bit...getting people to visit and post. If you know anyone who works or lives in London then get them to post on your forum and ask them to get their friends to aswell. Controversy is a good way to go here I think. Start threads about things that will draw people in and make them want to debate. You said there are things that excite you and things that piss you off - well start with these and go from there. (i would personally rant and rave about the tube until night comes because it drives me mad) There are quite a few universities in London and some probably don't have any forum for their students - maybe you could exploit this by getting a catgeory in there for these students to talk to each other. To get some good natural traffic from SEs I would suggest writing about bars, clubs, restaurants and things like that where there is little competition but a fair amount of traffic. Make sure you put the name of the bar etc in the thread title. That's all I can really think of for now....I will ponder it some more though and come back with anything else I come up with.
thanks, theres some good ideas there. I understand what you mean about making it more compact so thats something I'll tinker with. The universities is a good idea, i'll add that in. You are welcome to come and rant all night about the tube, I'll probably be joining you! I've added a Poll about the tubes seeing we was talking about it , only thing is I'm not sure how it makes the top part of the front page look, as now the forum itself has been pushed down.
Simply put - it's not PR 6. Take a look at the cache: http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://findinlondon.com/ http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=info:http://findinlondon.com/&btnG=Search&meta= Sorry Jez.
ah I get it, because I was using web forwarding on findinlondon.com it someone thinks findinlondon was pr6. When will it update?
Regardless of the validity of the domain's PR it is a good, brandable name. I think the poll at the top of the page looks ok and would keep it, but maybe change the options as they seem a little restrictive. I know it's a lot of work but to really get this forum off the ground you may have to resort to ghost posting. By this I mean you should set up multiple users for yourself and have conversations and debates among you, yourself and you again! Try and ask questions and then answer them to make it seem like a place people can go to get the answers they need. Join other forums that are partly or wholly related to london. Try looking at this Q&A site to see what people want to know about London and start threads on your forum that relate to the same question....then point the question authors helpfully towards your site. Try this on Yahoo Answers aswell. For a small trickle of traffic (and possibly for SERPS if these blogs use dofollow) try commenting on London blogs I don't know how well it would work but article submission could have some residual traffic and may also help your SEO efforts. I think you would really struggle with social bookmarking like Digg and Stumbleupon though and definitely wouldn't try unless I had a really good thread to post. Do you allow signatures? If so this might persuade sensible webmasters & businesses targeting London traffic and links to join and post. Once there is a little bit of critical mass to your forum (and by this I mean a couple of hundred posts) you could try holding a contest and give away tickets to Madam Tussauds, the London Eye or even a theatre trip. Then try and advertise the competition in as many places as possible. To stand a chance of winning users must say why they love or hate London in no more than 200 words. You would judge the best pieces - i suggest one winner for loving and one for hating London. That's all for now, there may be more to come....
Thanks again for lots of really good ideas. I thought about ghost posting, but its something I'm trying to avoid if possible, having said that I have been going in there and posting some little tit bits of info and my experiences of being in London. what do you mean by signatures? although adding a directory component where people can upload their own links might be something that would be a good idea, and I suspect would help deflect people from advertising directly in the forum, when they can simply upload a link anyway. I never knew that London blogs existed, so thats an interesting avenue to look into. Especially if I can get some high traffic London bloggers mentioning findinlondon. I was talking to a business friend of mine today who looked at the site, and he was suggesting not having the forum on the front page, but yet have a more basic front page, that lays out with some copy what the website is, together with some nice buttons that link to the forum, the map option, etc. I'm not sure abou that, but I think it is a mistake to think that everyone is forum savy, and will instantly know what it is they are looking at and continue to scroll through the answers. Thanks again for the advice!
By signatures I mean allowing people to have a link or some text that shows below all of their posts (much like here on DP - check my sig links). As for creating a more user-friendly homepage, I wouldn't. I think that the forum is the main focus of your site and should be the first thing they see. This will be especially attractive to new users once the forum is getting more and more posts. A simple landing page as a homepage would not have the same impact. Plus in terms of SEO efforts if you manage to get a homepage which is spidered regularly then its best to allow the spider easy access to all the new and juicy content that a forum suplies.
You've indeed good domain name that can be used for varieties of sites like travels/dating/restaurant/gadgets etc.