My Forum Making Tutorial: 1. Buy domain and good hosting. You need good hosting with Cpanel. Be smart and choose a good domain name that can easily be remembered. 2. Use VBulletin or phpbb3. Of course you need modded phpbb because unmodded s*cks. 3. Invite friends to post. 4. Advertise your site everywhere. (of course not breaking the rules of other sites) 5. Try to be very active at your forum. Dont let users think that your forum is "dying". At the beginning post more than everyone else. 6. Put ads in your site to earn money and to make new features. 7. PUT STRICT RULES ABOUT THE FORUM. Optional: - If you have some money that you want to spend in your forum make pay-per-post. So you'll attract a lot of users and they shold post. BEWARE: This would make that your forum attract spammers too. And that's a decent forum. Regards ArLinD P.S. Tutorial will be updated frequently with new advices.
2 is wrong use mybb instead of vb it is basically vb but free and better. It is also a how lot easier to make a template for a mybb forum. If you wanna see a good mybb forum google wiiloaded.
That was a good tips and best things you do is to advertise and promote your forum in a high traffic site.
Nice tips! Add this too "Provide some thing for FREE to your members to keep them active" . I use to give a FREE report and MRR products (Check my second sig!) for members at my brand new forum which was a popular URL at Stumbleupon on Dec 31 FREE will attract many people to join at your forum and if you give them lots of offers frequently, they will stick with your forum!
Good beginners advice. The new version of phpbb is really good. I like it a lot! The commercial ones are also really good and they have a lot of support and community involvement behind them.
Sorry but I feel this is far too opinionated and like those before me, am criticising point 2! I personally use SMF for forum projects and am 100% happy with it. Also, putting strict rules right from the beginning may result in lost visitors. I'm not saying have no rules, but don't scare your new members away! The rest of the points are fair even though pretty obvious
Thank you guys for your sincere comments. I'd completely forgotten about this thread and I just read your answers. I'm waiting for more answers! Thank You ArLinD
Nice tips, thank you. I think the comment about posting a lot at the beginning is especially useful - a lot of forum owners think if they have a good enough topic, people will just flock to their forum but nothing is as much of a turn off for a site than empty message boards. If people show they have an interest in their own forum and prove that by posting, more people will show interest as well.
You missed the part where you get traffic to your site... You'd need about 10 friends who post very regularly to make the site look at all active. I think you should add a point: When a new member who you don't know signs up, make sure you keep the involved by targetting them and asking them specific questions in order to keep them interested. Don't ignore your new members.