First of all I'd like to say hello to everyone (since this is my first post) I have not done very much in terms of online ventures (other than a few blog posts and many other unfinished projects), but I have read a wealth of information regarding different forms of them. I am now considering starting my own forum. I have had several ideas that I am still developing. I just have several questions for you guys in case anyone can offer some advice for a newbie =) I have looked around and determined that IPB and vBulletin are the 2 big boys. I am very interested in the bank system *domainatrix* is speaking of here: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=408337 Does anyone know if vbulletin has such a mod? I have tried coming up with ways to use the fact that I'm a dentist (recently graduated) to my advantage. However, dentistry is just not a sexy topic and can't seem to think of a niche. I would love any advice regarding this. Sorry for the long post, I have more questions but I will save them for other posts. Thank you once again, Eugene
Hi Eugeen, I would disagree with you about dentistry, Teeth are a major subject. Advice how to look after them, ask the dentist ect. If there is no forum doing it, try it, wet your feet in the internet world.
Forums are a good subject but I guess you should invest your time on a blog. Reason : Forums can only work if you are able to gather active people and that takes some times. You are actually dependent on user's activity while with blog, if you have good and original content.. your blog can start rocking from the day 2 .. and if you need more people to write then make them partner or hire for your blog .. that will be easy. But on forum, you first need to build contents.. then build userbase, then an active userbase and then u hve to keep them engaged else ur forum won't work .. But last and the best part of the forum is that .... if once got activity then u don't have to do much apart of monitoring and taking care of it.. Good luck ...
Thank you for your input I am definitely thinking about starting something. Can you please give me some clues as to how I might hire people to write for me. I am willing to invest money in this.
With a forum you can expect at least 6 - 8 months before you get any real content and around a year before traffic starts to take off. If you have still have a blog, you can use it as a portal for your forums. Just put some links on the blogs home page going to the forum. Currently I have 2 blogs with similar domain names as the main forum. Both of them help drive traffic to the forum. I will post an article on the blog, then a link at the bottom saying something like - "click here to discuss this article". The link takes the person to the forum were the article might be posted again, or a different version of the article is posted. Forums give people more freedom to discuss blog post, then the blogs itself. Or so I think. The point is, if you already have an established blog or website, it can be utilized as a traffic funnel for the forum. If you have a question about a vbulletin modification, then start at the offical VB mod site - http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/portal.php and go from there. Blogs are one thing, but forums are a whole different world. With forums you have people interacting with each other, getting mad, flame wars, drama queens and drama kings. You have to balance all of that out. It takes a serious amount of time to moderate a busy forum. You will need volunteer moderators once the site takes off. So you need people that you can trust. As for myself, I visit more forums then blogs. I like sites that I can interact with, not just read. By opening a forum you will be attracting a different type of internet user that you might be used to. Regardless of what you might think about a forum on "dentistry", it is better to use a topic you have a passion about, then a "get rich quick" topic. If you are a professional dentist, then why not point the forum towards the dental profession? Give the dentist a place to discuss new research, techniques and a place for lay people to ask questions? I see great possibilities for such a forum. Especially if you work in the dental field.
I will also recommend you to start blog instead of forums. ~kev~ & others already explain you in details! So, Good Luck!
Making a forum site and managing it is definitely more demanding, time-consuming than running a blog site. But the return can be enormous. You'd be able to establish new friendships and perhaps forge a business partnership with one of your trusted members. As your forum site grows, expect that problems will multiply too. You are actually managing an online community and each person has different tastes and attitudes. For more comprehensive insight on how to start a forum website, follow that preceding link.
Having a forum is not only challenging, but if it works it can be very rewarding. There are thousands of forums out there, the challenge is finding a niche that will stand out from the rest.... I would start off by paying for a domain, and some web space. Use one of the free forum software packages, I really like phpBB3, and if it takes off maybe upgrade to something like VB if you want to.
Ah no, they are two different things. Wordpress is a blog software, whereas vBulletin is a forum software.
Ah crap i don't know what i was thinking there I mean what are the advantages of wordpress over blogger?
But expensive. There are two leaders in free forum software that are very good. phpBB and SMF. Okay you do not get all the fancy mods VB can offer, but for free these are a great starting block for any new forum.
Looks like you have found what you were looking for, but it is very easy to move the data across if you need to. I really would consider using something like phpBB, there are loads of very big forums that prefer to use the free bulletin boards. When I ran a VB forum the package and mods were very good, but I am just as comfortable with SMF and phpBB3. There is no doubt that VB is the best, but I quite like the free ones.
the good part about vb is security parch and updates almost every month also there are some good SEO add-on and sitemaps generators(i use nuhit sitemap generator even is not supported anymore is optimized for allot of VB add-ons) submit them daily to google yahoo etc