I am so amazingly frustrated right now

I have had a forum up for over 4 years and i have about 908 posts total. It's a specific engine type forum that alot of people have. A friend of mine opens a new forum on the exact same subject and his forum get 78 new members and 1,068 posts in the first day. I do not understand what it takes to build a forum, get it started. I have my forum link out on at least 2000 posts on related forums, i told people about it and then this bullshit happends. It's like the forum link in my sig, I had to pay for all those posts and I thought well maybe if i buy a bunch of posts and people see that they want to join in on my fake community? WRONG I've gotten 1 post in 2 months since i bought 2500 of them. WTF

 

I feel you. I just do not understand how some people start a forum and get real members and activity almost immediately. I've built links and tried almost everything I can (except hiring posters because I'm against that). I've also found it hard to promote on related forums through your signature because those forum members are loyal to that community and have no reason to join my less active community. My forum is about 3 months old and has 297 posts. about 200 of those posts are probably from me.

I think what you have to have is connections. I think you need to know someone who knows alot of people to be able to get one going pretty quick.

I'm still trying to find a way :')

 

That's true. I feel a forum is a riddle, an irony, two controversies at the same time and place. Unit you have lots of quality posts on your forum, members won't drop off there and until you have lots of members quality posts on forum is never possible. Members are waiting for posts and posts are waiting members. Thus its a tough time for webmaster on these earlier days till a forum is standing.

 

I'm not going to quit, it's just so frustrating that I cant get an active community and i have all kind of web knowledge from the past 10 years of messing with websites and then some guy that didn't even know how add image to the top of his forum gets a successful forum on the first day. there up to like 1,700 posts now.

 

Just a matter of luck may be . but I think he might be paying people to make posts..

 

1068 post / 78 members = over 13 post each the first day.
He's paying.

To get a forum running, you need
1) unique content
2) people who start interesting discussions (interesting in the sense of discussions that people feel the need to respond)

Both of them will get you a good search engine position, which is a must to get visitors.

 

Well you cant just jump to a conclusion like that 0o

Anyhow its all about what u haev to offer, people wont just go to your forum and "post" thats a boring waste of time.

Tell me what your forum has to offer?

What does DP Offer? -> Rev Sharing | The forum has pagerank | Active Market

What does your site offer? -> dead market..

Think of it like that?

What can you do?
Hire a PHP Programmer and make a webbased SEO tool?
Hire a C++ Programmer and make a semi-automatic directory submiter? there are so many things you can do


- my 2 cents

 

No offence but your forum looks boring, I had the same problem nobody joined I used PHPbb standard style, after one month I changed the look and suddenly people joined, it might have something to do with how people see your forum, is it enviting? does it look like fun? Give them option. I gave my members lots of BBcodes to play with.

Another thing I found, I hate when after you register, you have to goto your email account to verify, in the beginning avoid that if possible, some people just want to ask a quick question.

Just my 2 cents

 

Try to make your forum innovative. That is, add in features or special things that will make people want to join.

Hold contests instead of spending money promoting. This way people will try to win and you will get more activity.

Get your friends to help you, but not the one who opens up a competitor forum.

Add some cool mods. Mods make forums more interesting.

 

Then maybe it's time you try a different approach. Forums aren't for everyone.

I would say 1 in 10 of my forums I start succeeds and that's just because the right combinations are there. Natural traffic, nice layout, good navigation, niche topic, and the right starter members are just part of the items that help a forum succeed.

I open about 10-12 new forums a year until I get a couple that stick..I nuture them, push them, give them time. Much as you would a plant. Sometimes you just have to lay out a lot of seed for just some to grow.

If you have a dead forum..maybe it's time to rid yourself of it once and for all. There are probably better projects you can work on.

 

I have found that it takes lots of patience and time to get a forum going like you really want.

Lately, I have been posting comments on related blogs and omg...new members are joining like crazy but it just takes patience and time.

 

I had actually started posting on a very well known forum for a while before I started my own. This had given me time to get to know other posters on the board. Well at the time that they had been getting sick of the forum because of "Trolls" I had started another forum. They were a group of well known consecutive posters. My forum has been up since the end of May and has over 21,000 posts. I give a lot of credit to these dedicated posters. They have helped the forum a lot.

I also do try to spice things up on my forum by switching the theme at least once a month and adding new modifications which I think will keep the posters entertained / occupied. I also do my best to get around and ask how they are doing and see if there is anything I can help them with.

 

Yeah, its about who you know.

But seriously adam, I think your forum needs a theme change ... the default phpBB theme base is horrible in my opinion.

 

makin a forum is the last thing on this earth i would do.
or even if ill do, ill sell all my sites and will concentrate on it for huge period of time.
or else me and google bots will be seen on my forums.lol

 

He's not paying them, I'm a moderator on the forum. People are actually donating to the site. I have access to the account and it's over $375 in donations.

No offense but every successful phpbb and vbulletin forum i've seen uses the default theme including the god awful one on dp.

My forum has been up for over 4 years with the site getting 200-700 vistors a day.

I'm not using the default theme. I think it's just phpbb in general. I'm about to ditch it for good.