Hello in the rules about the signatures you have a little mistake, really not important but here it is: What are the restrictions and requirements to have a signature and live links? Our system has automatic signature guideline enforcement. Currently the restrictions are: Up to 250 characters In fact when I modified my signature the system says 350 characters allowed, not only 250. I don't think it is because I have a premium subscription but even if so it should be added, similarly to what is added for number of links (2 for basic and 4 for premium) It's on this page: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/faq.php?faq=signatures#faq_signature_requirements
It's not a mistake, I think this has been recently altered with increase by 100 characters which is great.
Well both 250 and 350 characters are right... you can have 250 characters not counting BBCode markup, but the limit is 350 if you count BBCode.
Ah maybe need a little explanation in the faq (to be true it doesn't need) I don't even remember why I've looked at the faq in the first place. Yes I remember it was to see if links to other forum were prohibited or not, they're not, so that was good.
Off topic a bit, but have you ever considered writing your own descriptions for your forum sections rather than copy/pasting them from here?
I had considered it yes, but first I've found them very nice (since I use them a lot here) and so I took the categories AND the description.. Thinking about changing them later on, since at this moment I was quite busy setting up the forum and posting the first posts on each categories, and surely other things. Then I took a little pause, and of course "forgot" (how convenient) all about changing them... and now, several months later, I look like a fool, giving myself up to the very one I took the description from! Oops! I better change them now! Edit: done! I just needed that little boost
Double off-topic... but I'm also curious why people start forums based around topics that there isn't really a *need* for another forum on that topic. I mean there are literally thousands of forums already existing about AdSense (just as an example, but it's a broader question really)... Some cover the topic well and some cover the topic poorly, but unless a new site is doing something better than all other sites there is little incentive for people to migrate to those sites. There are a LOT of AdSense related forums out there... ask yourself as an end user, why would you use the new site when it doesn't do anything better/faster, etc... It just seems to me that when people create forums that are similar categories to thousands of sites already out there, they are just offering a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist. Again, this is not specifically targeted towards you or your site, I've just always been very curious about it. Like how people start webmaster forums when there are literally thousands of them already and they aren't doing anything better than the already existing ones. For this site, it WAS about creating a solution to an existing problem... we had a ton of very popular webmaster related tools that have been around longer than the forum (for example: http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker.php ), and we needed a support venue for existing users. That was half of it, and then the other half is we all hung out at http://forums.seochat.com/ (where I was even a moderator), but a ton of mis-management happened and we started to look for a different community to hang out in. There were none to our liking, so we just ended up turning this forum into our new hangout (again... it originally was a support forum for our products/tools). Since it was a solution to a problem that actually existed, the forum filled up quickly.
For my forum specifically it's because it's a multi user site with adsense revenue sharing, and I wanted a place to discuss amongst member. I approve only members who are also adsense publishers. So I thought in this forum I should have section about adsense, but yes of course there are many many places to talk about adsense. I don't have any other forum because in the past I created some but found it too much work to my taste. So I refrained from having any forum, but lately I added this forum on my multi user site, it allows me to communicate with member and add a community feeling (limited I'm aware) to the site. Adsense seemed like an obvious category to have. I know of another case who is a member on DP he has created his forum called adsenseexperts.com his idea was that there are too many places where there are too much noise from adsense newbies, so he added a quizz about adsense before you can join his forum. The result is that there is not much discussion going on, but at least there isn't much noise at all On many webmaster forums there are sub forums about adsense specifically, because it's very famous of course. About your general observation I guess it's the same idea for so many make money online blogs, or adsense tips blogs being created all the time.