Hi all, I have got a webmaster forum called www.directoryjunction.com/forums/ We have 250+ members but very few of them are posting and participating in discussions. We don't have many spammer on our forum but still not much activity there. I do post there daily with some informative stuff but no comments from the other members. What thing can attract members to participate? Any suggestion? Thanks in advance.
I don't know...seems like a relatively nice site. Have you done any promotions or contests? The only negatives I see are the top fold has too many ads and that you should finish skinning the site as you have a lot of default VB parts. However structure looks good overall and it's not unappealing. You may need to spend some money advertising. Think of something creative to get people active as well. With a webmaster forum you have to find a niche or a way to be original. If you don't stand out enough people won't have a reason to participate.
Nope, we have not done any contests there but have announced the forum on other webmaster forums and put it in my sig link as well. I will tell about the ads to the technical person who does work for me. Will try to decrease them.
Upgrade your vBulletin to gold too. Having outdated BETA's running while stable has been out a while suggests that the webmaster doesn't care.
http://upload44.com/uploads/995-052208-113020.png Is that suppose to be some type of navigation? It's terrible looking. I thought it was an ad.
Yeah this is looking like an ad... make some changes and make it look pleasant.. probably u will find me in also run some contests to make people more involved... u may give some domains/hosting as gift so starters will make your forums go green.
I will tell my partner to do the changes. He is the MAIN administrator so its up to him if he do the changes or not. And for the contests, I am running only 1 thing as a promotion here http://www.directoryjunction.com/forums/showthread.php?t=806 And, it would be nice to see you there Hope you will join and participate also, not like other members who just join and keep silent
Also think about making the welcome message for guests a image. Read about why you should change this at this site. http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com/f7/how-make-your-welcome-headers-image-252.html#post756 Also, by upgrading your vbulletin to the gold version, a lot more bug's and a security bug will be fixed. Be sure to backup the whole forum before upgrading. Lot's of good suggestions already made. Perhaps send a mass email out to all members asking for suggestion's or feedback about the forum. Also inform them that your forum is a ad sharing revenue forum and the more they post, the more chances they could earn a few cent's. Well time for me to get some sleep. I'm rambling on right now.