What's your best forum advice?

I've just started a forum (3 days old) attached to my site, I have 50 members and 3 mods (hmmm looks like it's a little top heavy already ). What are the most valuable lessons you've learnt during your early forum days? Things that you perhaps would have done differently? Indicators of growth? Advertising/linking/get people involved suggestions? Any advice is greatly welcomed and appreciated.

 

1. switch to vbulletin if you can afford it it runs very well and has many great features. a big time saver.
2. pick good mods and give them as much control as you can trust them with.
3. do anything you can to encourage community feelings. e.g. give awards, use a reputation system, etc.

those are the things that have worked well for me

 

Make frequent backups! I know this may seem obvious, but there are quite a few who tend to forget or neglect this, and a malicious hacker or problems with a host can mean days/months/years of forum postings down the tubes. Better safe than sorry

 

You are trying to work on 4 images ad placement which is not working as the border of your 728x90 is not transparent.
Also i would recommend you to work on your left panel of the website which looks freaky with the Blue + Rep combination.
Well this is my small advice
Also get some paid posters for a limited time. which will help you a lot.

 

thanks guys, they're all good tips - may switch to vbulletin when the site takes off... although that probably sounds counter productive! backups - check! and yes, I'm aware on the 4 images - I turn them on for 1 week in four, even tho they don't quite sync up properly, however my regulars become a little site blind, what I am going to go change is the blue and orange combo I wondered if that looked a little out or freaky even! and didn't know that there was such a thing as paid posters Thanks for all those tips - I do appreciate it.

 

Important lessons:

1) Choose stable software. Premium options are worth the extra money. And of them, vBulletin is best.
2) Regular back-ups (even during construction) are an absolute must.
3) When a forum is an extension of a site, it must look that way. Adjust the skin accordingly, even if you have to pay somebody to do it.
4) Stand out from the crowd and offer unique feature enhancements to your members.
5) Always install SEOed url hacks.
6) Remember that if guests can't see it, the page can't be indexed (unless you have vBulletin, in which case a hack exists to fix that).
7) You already have more forums that one of your size ought to.
8) Get your name out there through link exchanges, buying ad space, improving SEO, getting listed in directories, ect.
9) If you need to drum up traffic, paid posters or post swaps are worthwhile.
10) Know who your competition is, what they do better than you, and why they're more successful. Then figure out how to beat them at their own game.

 

It's already been said a few times, but the most important thing by far is to backup - and backup often, no matter what! I'd say this is both the most costly and most common mistake made by forum owners...data can be lost when you least expect it...and once it's lost, you will never see it again.

Second most important thing is to never give up. Running forums is not easy and often very discouraging...The vast majority of forums will die within the first 3 months...dont be one of them

 

Mmm... interesting link in your signature...

 

eh?

 

I'm visiting AdminFusion right now.

Cool stuff!

 

Ah, ok - much appreciated, enjoy your visit

And sorry to go off-topic folks....This train's back on board now!

 

Might also try vBulletin FAQ

 

thanks again guys, great tips... there's obviously a lot more to running a forum than I'd first thought.

 

To be accurate, there is alot more to running a SUCCESSFUL forum then most people think.

 

Not really needed if you're running Vbulletin 3.5x

 

vB does put out nicer urls, but the SEOed ones are still much better.

 

I went through a couple of forum packages. Of course started with those free of charge.

Last time I was very close to switch to phpBB (from w-agora French stuff, which was killing on performance side). But I was lucky, because just 2 days before switching all phpBB sites went down due to hack attack for next 2 weeks.

Then I started checking which forum has quick security patching. Definetely vB. And now I am running 1,5 million posts forum on vB and can tell you, that after a year with vB I would never switch to any other package.
Support's great, patching light-fast, number of hacks&mods incredible and software itself extremely stable.

If you can afford buying vB licence - don't waste your time and work. Go 4 it

 

Can you prove your statement?