1. I recently made my own forum DecentDiscussions.com for which I designed the overall layout of the forum and modified the phpbb theme very much to make it look good. 2. To keep the forum active and with fresh content I tried to add new and interesting news/tutorials/funny stuff/general stuff...etc and didn't make the posts like "How old are you" "How much do you earn daily".... etc, because every forum is already filled with these kind of questions and I can't invite members to answer for these type of questions. I want to make it a better place to learn new things and ask for help. 3. I even started a forum posting contest but it didn't work very much. 4. Despite of all my efforts I am finding it hard to get some members What does it mean? - Does it mean that people are only interested on forums using VBulletin? - Does it mean that there are already many webmaster forums and my forum doesn't have anything new? - Or I am expecting the forum to grow very fast? I should wait and keep working hard? Should I blame PHPBB for not being able to popular my forum?
I'm a big vb fan but even I can't blame phpbb for this. Many new vb forums are also desperate for contributing members and growing content so this is really not related to your forum software. Yes, you should wait, post a lot of content yourself, encourage your close friends to post daily and ask their friends to join and if you are patient and hardworking enough, you'll succeed.
Yes, I am posting as much content as I can.. Friends are also posting on my forum but not much cause they have their own work to do. I have changed the Post Body Style to make it similar to VB and it is looking great now (at least to me ) Just working hard hard and hard to keep the forum running. I know it is just for few months, when I will have good number of members the story will be different.
You need a couple of exciting / upsetting / unique posts that you and submit to social networks to get people to chat on your site.
I decided to upgrade the forum to VB and have paid the coder for it. Because every new member was asking to upgrade the forum because they were not comfortable with phpbb. So I decided to upgrade. Thanks for your suggestions. Thread can be closed now.
While it is a challenge to get new users, the forum software does make a big difference. I'm glad to hear you went with vBulletin. Anything that is easier or more comfortable for users will help with registrations, and vBulletin shows to your members that you are invested.
The forum software shouldn't be a reason why you aren't getting members. General forums are very hard to get active (possibly the hardest), just keep posting and don't give up. What is your bounce-rate?
Actually it is General + Webmaster Talk Forum and I was blaming phpbb because now a days every new or famous forum is using VB, some of them started with phpbb and upgraded to VB later but I thought I should take this step early. Here is the traffic report of my forum from Sept 7, 2008 to date. * 19,603 Visits * 36,402 Pageviews * 1.86 Pages/Visit ---------------------- * 49.91% Bounce Rate * 00:01:42 Avg. Time on Site * 92.34% % New Visits
Software is much less important. Even if someone has a preference, they would never turn down a forum that has the content they want.
You must note that General Discussion forums are VERY hard to lift off the ground. There are hundreds of competing forums and so it makes it very hard for you to gain any ground in the niche. This could be one of the main problems you have; try to make the niche of your forum more focused so that it is unique to other forums. Or, you will have to offer features that no other forum has. Thing of something original and then market it correctly. You will have great difficulty with the topic you currently have. Like said before, the software doesn't really effect it that much. phpBB is a reputed software and it is good in it's own ways.