Where to Start
1. Choose a specific area to focus on and your target audience. It may be for local discussions, car lovers, business, advertising or whatever you’re interested in. It’s impossible to advertise to everybody, so you need to narrow down your audience.
2. Determine where your online forum will be located. Will it be part of your website or on a separate domain? Once the decision is made and acted upon, it’s extremely difficult to change.
3. Decide on hosting. Are you going to host your own forum or use a remote forum host? Compare the features and the restrictions and limits. Hosting your own forum gives you more interface options. Free forum hosts generally fill your forum with advertising, which can be removed for a fee.
4. Research the available forum software. Compare the features and pricing. There are many options with varied features available. Some popular forum software providers include Vbulletin, PHPBB, simplemachines.org
5. Try to work out everything you want in terms of the interface and functionality from the start and stick with it. Of course you will want to update features from time to time but continually making changes so members have to relearn the posting process will just frustrate them.
6. Work out what forums (categories) you’re going to have but keep the number proportional. If you’re just starting out, you don’t want 20 empty forums. Just start with say five and add more as your community grows.
7. Start the forum topics yourself by posting relevant key questions and providing quality answers under different aliases. You can actually hire help for this but not many owners prefer this option. Don’t think this is deceiving your audience. There is no other way to start the conversations because not many people ever want to be the first from fear of looking like a fool. Remember not to respond to your answers too quickly.
Conversations & Arguments
8. Allow members to express their opinions and arguments. There’s nothing worse than cutting someone off in their tracks, as long as the rules are followed. Remember, arguments spark interest, so let them develop.
9. Don’t delete a member’s post just because you disagree with their opinion.
10. Create an administrator account and a general user account. Use your general alias to post like any other member. Not many users feel comfortable debating with an administrator or moderator, even if you ask them to.
11. Allow users to opt in to be emailed responses to their posts. This reminds them of your existence, keeps them interested and invites further response.
12. Keep your signal to noise ratio low. This means cutting the amount of false, superfluous data whilst nourishing useful information and conversation. This is done by setting down rules and enforcing them through moderating. It makes the forum more user- friendly and relevant.
13. Prohibit personal attacks. They not only aggravate the victim, tolerating this behavior makes online forums seem unprofessional and unfriendly.
14. Don’t allow arguments unrelated to your forum topic. You may like to place topics such as religion or sport in their own separate categories. This way people who wish to avoid them can.
15. Don’t permit members to libel, slander or otherwise accuse others without substantiation.
16. Don’t allow members to continue arguments just by repeating the same thing over and over.
Making friends
17. Members like to be valued and to feel part of a community. The best way to show you care is to be part of that community. Make yourself known and add to the conversation.
18. Have a new member introduction area. Rather than newbies just contributing to a certain topic, they can feel part of a community straight away by either introducing themselves or simply saying hi in the new members area. It’s a great ice breaker.
19. Be honest with your members. If you made a mistake which affected their use of the forum, let them know and apologize. This way you’ll build a good rapport with your users – they support you, you support them.
20. Be friendly and respectful towards your members. They do appreciate feeling valued.
21. Remember to value your members. Without them, your forum wouldn’t exist.
22. Don’t surprise your members, always let them know in advance before you make changes or add features.
23. Don’t exploit your users by selling their personal information. That is the ultimate betrayal.
24. Allow users to contribute at their own pace. Of course, providing incentives for valuable contributions is absolutely fine.
25. Learn from the members. If they complain about you or your forum, look at it objectively. Take it in your role, not personally. They may have a valid point.
26. Avoid siding with a member against others. You’re role is to be impartial.
27. Treat everyone as equals – never be biased. You might dislike a member, but pushing their buttons won’t do you any favors, especially when they leave and complain about you on other discussion sites. Apply the rules equally, even if your mother breaks them.
Moderators
28. Moderating a forum can be a huge task, especially when the community starts growing. It can become too big a task for a single owner to handle alone. If you’re being stretched, don’t be afraid to seek outside help for moderating the forum. Many moderators work voluntarily so you don’t need to be out of pocket.
29. Ask current members if they are willing to act as moderators for a topic they’ve been contributing to and are knowledgeable about. It can even be a few minutes per day.
30. When selecting moderators, treat the process as if you were hiring an employee. Ask yourself, are they appropriate for the topic? Are they interested in the forum theme? Do they have problems with attitude or authority?
31. Allocate different moderators for each discussion.
32. Keep the number of moderators proportional to your community. You don’t need 10 moderators if you only have 20 members.
33. Set down clear rules and guidelines for your moderators. They need to know exactly what’s expected of them. When can they intervene, edit or delete a post or even ban a member?
34. Let moderators start new topics to keep discussions fresh.
35. Don’t let mods delete a member or post, even if it does breach the rules. First, mods should give the member an opportunity to rectify their actions. This keeps relationships between members and moderators civil.
36. If the mod must take action, they should send the member a message to notify them of the action and give reasoning. Members can break the rules by accident without even knowing.
37. Don’t let moderators act like they’re above the members. Sure there’s a hierarchy that must be followed, but the more members are aware of it, the less enticing it is to join and contribute. Moderators should be friendly and not draconian.
38. Let the mods know they’re help or work is appreciated. A mere ‘thank you’ provides incentive to work on your community and to do it well.
39. If a moderator is difficult to deal with, constantly breaches rules or puts his or her interests above the forum, just get rid of them.
Your expectations about Online Forums
40. Don’t start a forum for money – you will be disappointed, well, definitely at the start. Things may improve, but many just hope to cover their operating costs.
41. Don’t simply assume members are going to keep starting and maintain conversation. Many forum owners find posts may fizzle out one week and then regenerate the next. Continual flow of posts and conversation doesn’t just happen naturally. Your input will be needed from time to time and it may take years to generate a self-sufficient community. If you keep strong, it will happen for you.
42. Make sure you enjoy the topic. Without any other incentive, you may find it hard to keep motivated.
43. Don’t think your members are going to come flooding in as soon as the doors open.
44. Don’t expect members not to be annoyed by advertising. Whilst some advertising is expected, it shouldn’t disrupt the usability.
45. Don’t just copy categories from other related forums. People often join communities to find something unique and fresh.
46. Be flexible. You might think you’ve created the ultimate forum, but you never know how users are going to react to certain policies or features. Be prepared to make changes and adapt your community to suit members’ needs and wants.
47. You will be harassed and criticized, especially after banning a member. Not everyone is nice and not everyone will have the same opinions and good intentions for your community. at times, you will need to be tough for the good of your online community.
48. Don’t compare your forum statistics to others. Every community is unique and the number of visits, page views or forum members doesn’t mean one is more successful than the other. Statistics won’t reveal community sentiment. They can’t show how many of those posts are quality and worthwhile or how many members are real contributors rather than spammers.
Invigorate Your Forum
49. Regularly start new threads and contribute to topics. Don’t wait for the conversation to dry up before contributing.
50. Spark interest by posting something controversial. It gets people fired up and chatting. Just don’t be defamatory or racist.
51. Use polls to keep interest in topics.
52. Run small competitions and quizzes.
53. Encourage valuable contributions and contributors with prizes or awards. For example, “contributor of the month”.
54. Make sure questions are answered. Post quality answers yourself either as administrator or under different names. People appreciate good advice no matter who it comes from.
55. Ask members for feedback to determine what policies and features they like / dislike.
56. Keep the content fresh. If members don’t see new and interesting things, they will move on to other communities.
57. Post a calendar of events to entice return visits to scheduled events.
58. Run guest interviews. Interview an expert, a friend, even your family members and post the results.
59. Remove unpopular topics. They are poisonous to a thriving community.
60. Don’t try to invigorate the forum by changing the interface. If members have to keep figuring out how to respond to posts, they will get annoyed.
61. You can change colors from time to time just to keep things interesting, but don’t alter functionality too often.
Use Spam tools and mods for Online Forums
62. Set up email verification to weed out most of the spammers (they never click on the validation link).
63. Block open proxy registrants – registration requests from open proxy servers are usually malicious.
64. Use Captcha, image verification or textual confirmation (TC) to require humans to retype what’s shown in the distorted image. Other computers can’t read what’s in the image, thereby blocking automated requests.
65. Allow members to report spam and trolls.
66. Filters – block users via IP, URL or domain name. Use the swear filter to reject any keyword you specify.
67. Set up additional required member profile fields which spambots won’t have. For example “reasons for joining?”
68. Use cryptographic signing. This ensures posts come from the appropriate form, which was generated specifically for that user and that a certain amount of time (like 5 seconds) has elapsed before the form is submitted. This disables automated posting from bots.
69. Hide the signature fields at registration. Any applicant who fills out the hidden fields (ie: spambots) will be rejected. You can also activate IP banning so their IP is automatically blocked.
70. Use flood control to restrict the number of posts a user can create within a specific period of time.
71. Regularly undertake mass pruning to delete inactive accounts. Make sure you specify conditions as to which accounts are to be deleted and notify your members prior to pruning.
72. Link rejectors – asks visitors or guests to remove links from their posts prior to posting. This also eliminates automated posts.
73. Use an external blacklist to reject registrant applications containing details within their blacklist. These blacklists generally contain thousands of IPs, names and email addresses.
74. Create a spam sub forum and hide it from genuine members.
75. Many suggest disallowing links in signatures. However, using the above tools will get rid of the majority of spammers and spambots. Some people only look for forums to contribute to if they can be rewarded with that signature link. By disallowing it, you risk losing some potential contributors.
Software etc.
76. Make sure your server capacity can handle an influx of visitors. If you become mentioned or noticed for some reason, you want those visitors to actually sign up and log in.
77. Before adding a new mod, hack or feature, back up everything and record the process. Remember that some hacks and customizations may not be compatible with software upgrades.
78. Keep your software and security patches current.
79. Backup regularly. If your forum software doesn’t offer backup features, use PHPMyAdmin for your SQL database.
Forum Rules
80. Due to the large amounts of spammers and trolls, you will need a set of forum rules. This way, your members can know what to expect and what’s appropriate on your forum.
81. Think of every possible situation that could go wrong and based on this, jot down a list of issues which need to be addressed in your forum rules. For example, what happens if a member breaches a rule for the first time, the second time etc. In what circumstances will you delete/suspend a member immediately and without warning?
82. Take a look at similar discussion sites to get more ideas for your rules and policies.
83. Change the policies and rules as your community develops – they are not set in stone.
84. Don’t make the rules too draconian. Your rules should also entice visitors to join. For instance you should allow links inside posts, users to promote their business and to post commercial messages in their signature.
Promoting Your Forum
85. Announce a grand opening on your website.
86. Send your friends a short email to inform them of your new project.
87. Add a link to your forum anywhere you can, including your email signature, your website, your Facebook or Twitter profile.
88. Link to a poll on the forum from your website.
89. Put a “hot topics” section on your website linking to the forum.
90. add a link to the forum from your contact page and your email signature stating “want an immediate answer? Post to our forum”.
91. Build traffic gradually. Even if you could get thousands of people to your new site at once, you wouldn’t want that. You need to test your community and weed out the problems. It wouldn’t be very enticing for members to return to a new forum which was filled with bugs, had limited content and crashed due to overloaded traffic.
92. Make your forum fun and interesting to start with. There’s no use directing people to a boring empty discussion site. See Reinvigorate Your Forum above for ideas.
93. Don’t pay for advertising until you have some rich and valuable content. Visitors will just leave, making your advertising expenses superfluous.
94. Contribute to other forums with a link to yours on your profile or signature.
95. Never use spam to promote your online community; it’s a guaranteed reputation killer.
96. Don’t join online forums just to drop your link. Using the “what do you think of my site” post is a really bad idea. At best, you will be called a troll by the other members.
97. Find other communities with like interests and ask to exchange links.
98. Add constructive comments to blogs related to your niche. Don’t just drop links, actually contribute. After contributing to a blog a few times, contact the blogger. Introduce yourself and establish dialog. Ask them what they think of your site and see if they would like to interview you or for you to write a guest post for their blog.
99. Use twitter and post useful updates. Don’t just re-tweet all the time. Actually share your opinion, link to some interesting forum posts and give useful tips and advice. Use twitter appropriately, people generally don’t want to know what you’re having for breakfast.
100. Set up RSS alerts to keep informed about conversations relating your forum and specific topics that you cover. This way, you can comment as soon as a conversation starts.
101. If your forum is very specific, try adding some general community elements such as newsworthy events and interesting facts relating to your industry. Something that will appeal to the lowest common denominator.