How did Digital Point become so big?

I think this summarizes initial reason of the whole fact in addition to the right niche. Others are the details but still very important to become bigger than the other webmaster forums.

 

A lot of hard work and dedication, getting in the market at the right time and benefiting from a good quality membership base.

 

I know a lot of people made the move here when sitepoint started charging for everything in their marketplace. Thats when I moved, and I had just simply heard the name when I was upset with what I was currently using...voila here I am.

 

i have a forum found in 06/2006. now i got almost 50k members.

 

Interesting link. Summary: a network becomes more valuable when more people use it.
It doesn't answer the basic question though: how did Shawn get so many people to join in? I think the open format is one answer. I can't tell you how often I've been annoyed at not being able to see what's going on at webmaster world without logging in. I eventually learned to not follow the links there.

The discussion at some of the other SEO forums seem a bit more thought out sometimes, but for some reason I never felt like that would be the place for me. I joined DP one day because there was such a stupid discussion going on I could not resist butting in

 

Thanks for contributing. As for proboards, my site is the largest christian community hosted on it, i agree that hosting on a free site is a hinderance, however i have purchansed domain names such as christianmessageboard.co.uk - newest one and worldwidechristiansonline.co.uk

Andy

 

So? What does that have to do with anything?

 

guess he wanted to brag lol

 

Good SERPS, definitely

 

I own a forum with about 99,000 registered members, all I can share about how to make a successfull forum is..

1. Choose good domain name
2. Eye catching skin / design, do not make it too heavy, light decent skin with pleasent colours.
3. Post quality content about your niche.
4. Make atleast 1 thing unique on your website, that can be any script, category, section that can attract new users. Honestly I wrote some scripts and I intentionally put some bugs in it, so that people can involve themseves in forums, and I was right.
5. Do not make STRICT rules, coz everybody will hate and leave you.
6. Arrange competitions and spend some bucks, e.g if you are planning to spend $300 on advertising why not to arrange a competition on your forum and make a strategy where members can get them involved in the forums, at the end you will get more active members and more exposure which you will not get by spending $300 by advertising ..

there are a few other points as well, I think I will make a separate thread about my experince on making forums, I do own 2 very active forums and started from 0..

cheers

 

900 members is pretty low, I think its mostly because your forum looks unprofessional, looks like any random joe could make it. YOu need to have something that makes it stand out.

Personally, I've even gotten over 1600 members in less than 7 months.

 

Im not great with graphics, would you care to suggest somewhere/someone who would redo the graphics on my site? Can anyone help?

Thanks

 

I have seeked proffessional advice about the design, and they said it wasnt as bad as how you made it out to be. However I have commisioned someone to redesign my site which should be done my Monday next week.

 

i really looking for DP type webmaster forums, but still not find.. DP is best. good optimze, when ever i search some keywords, DP threads on top in google. so i belive that dp become popular from google search. 2nd this forum is fast, and have alot of features, singature, ur adsense id, trading etc..

 

That's it.. he put a lot of work into it without focussing on the $$.. Good going!

 

Great reference.

Thanks. Just read it all.

So do you guys think

DP > WHT?

Or is that best kept to a separate topic?

 

It probably has less to do with luck than with attracting the right core of people who carry a lot of influence and 'buzz power' in the webmaster community.

 

Its just addictive, its just the best place to get honest answers, and Shawn still has time to put his two cents in to. He has great mods and that by itself can make or break a good forum.

 

Maybe also because you don't own a domain name...