I know forums kind of look after themselves with user generated content, but just how much work is needed otherwise to keep the forum clean and free of abuse or any other issues that i havent even thought of yet?
Well I do forum management and forum posting for a client. He pays me monthly. Because it's still a start-up forum, it still needs a lot of work and posts and related backlinks. I usually spend at least 2 hours everyday to erase spam posts and to really check whether or not the posts are legit or were just posted for backlinks purposes.
In addition to SPAM, you also need to manage forum user relations. A lot of times cliques can evolve, disputes between members occur, etc.
You always have to watch for spam. If you have a clear policy, the users are not a big problem to deal with.
I've always thought that the best method for starting up a forum is the following: 1) Make your site (obviously), promote it and get some members coming in. 2) Moderate the forum yourself until you have a fair few members, deleting any spam posts that are made, and doing general maintence of the forum. 3) When the forum has a large user base, there will be a few posters who really stand out as quality posters. You should now hold interviews for people to become moderators. You should elect around three usually, but it depends on the amount of active members. People will do this voluntarily a lot of the time, because they enjoy going on the forum and would love to have some sort of say in the running of it. Hope thats helped!
Of course it is hard to run a forum and takes a long time to have a good rep. plus build a consderable amount of members. You will have to look at your competitor forums and see what they do. Try to do something different (with the standard features) which will make members loyal and registering.
Building membership is usually what does most forum owners in. It's not easy unless you have added it to an existing site with traffic. It's harder to start all by itself. If you have a name in a business, that helps, of course. There are updates, SEO issues, members flaming, moderators, security issues, banning issues, spamming issues and it needs to look like it's used. A forum that no one has posted on in a week is not inviting. There has to be some interest. Pick a generic subject that thousands of others have done, you have an uphill climb.
The hardest part about a forum is getting the members in.. and then sustaining the positive growth. When your forum gets big it does get pretty hard to contain, since you can't read every post yourself, which is why you need to make sure you have a really solid staff.
In the starting you need to work hard as you'll need the members who are the driving force of your forum. They are the content creators so you should get them to your forum and you should have something to offer in order too keep them regualr to your forum.
My forum is a year old and I spend countless hours trying to get more traffic. When I first started the forum, I spent long hours getting everything set up. But now, most of my time goes to getting quality members to join. So far, So good!
Well i have a site with around 30,000 uniques a month at the moment and i'm going to place a link to the forum on every page, so i don't think traffic will be the biggest problem. The spam does seem an issue though, will i have to check every post every day and is there an easy way of knowing which i've checked and not on the admin page? Also, are there any tips for eliminating spam that i should know?(i'll be using vBulletin) Thanks
The truth about forums is that they are hit or miss unless you already have a great site or network of sites that can point to it (and begin to put more emphasis on It rather than the interactivity of the page you're linking from, to an extent) so you seem good there. As for an easy way to check, you can just click View New Posts and View Active Topics to moderate them without too much hassle in sorting. You should try and have a staff member for every 100 or 200 users. Very few of them will post often enough to need to watch, and even fewer of those will cause you any hassles. Spamming is another story, but lay down the law and you'll get reports from users eager to join your cause
if it becomes big, you will need moderators to go through get rid of spam and stuff, because people will come to the forum just to post random and sometimes un neccesary adult content.
yes, you need a very good moderator, so you will either want to do it yourself, or, hire someone whom is a solid member....
You can hire a moderator to do the job. Or you can do it yourself Actually,it only take around 10 minutes/day to do the job if you have a small forum
How much would i be looking to pay a mod or what will motivate them to get rid of spam for me though? And would the money from adsense on the forum be able to cover this?
the most imp things to get active mods kids are really helpful from 12- 15 years old they will make alot of posts
bedros idea continued... it doesnt take that much money either. just need to make sure that the person doing the work doesn't feel like they are working for nothing.