Tips that i follow for making a good forum

[Shole]

The guide is for new forum makers to learn how to start.

Step one:
The first step is always the idea of the forum. If you just make the forum without an idea its like you made a house starting from the roof. There are many forums out there and it is hard to come up with a unique idea but people still find a way to come up with a good idea. So the best thing to do is to think.
Step two:
Lets say you have the idea of making a forum for a game. So it will be a game forum. You have to make it so that you have about everything from the game in the forum. By that I mean something like this:
Warcraft 3 forum
Patch Talks
Map Talks
Resources
Tutorials
That would be my choice of boards if I would make a warcraft 3 forum. Of course those are only the starting boards. If you make too much boards your forum will look empty and unattractive to the guests. The boards are an important thing to the forum. As a good admin you should post about 10 new topics and posts per day in your forum and you will see your boards will get filled and members will come to your site thinking that is an active site even if its not. Then the members who came will stay active only if you are active so you should post on a regular bases.
Step three:
The look of your forum is also an important component. If  you make a game forum try searching for the template that is made for that game. If such does not exist you decide ether to go with a light or dark theme depending on the idea (for warcraft I would say a dark blue/with some cold ice colors theme ). The menu of your forum should be simple and not to much put in it . A lot of menu tabs are good only when there are  a lot of active members in the forum. Its the same as the boards with a little different effect . Too much tabs leads to confusion of a member and he losses the will to join the forum.
Step four:
Keeping your community active is a tough job. For that your staff are a big + . A hard thing to do is hire staff. From my experience you should always put them on trial for a week before you give them full power. Also try to find calm staff never take those who post a lot  but get upset if you just suggest a small detail change. The best way to hire staff is from the active members in the forum. Make a contest or select a few active members and make them trail Mods to see how they do. If they do a good job hire them. A good thing also is to keep in mind the age of a staff member. I didn't say you can't hire a 13 year old kid to be a staff or even be admin but in most of the time they will get upset about something and may cause some damage.
Step five:
For keeping a forum active you on the first place should be as much active as possible. Also try to invent new things, host contests and other fun things that you can do on a forum like "Pirate Day" or some cool events to keep the members interested in staying in the forum. If you have a game forum make Tournaments in 1v1 battles or so , if you have a writing forum make a story contest and so on. You can even in your game forum make  a writing contest with a theme to continue the story of the game or reinvent it . Always be creative if you want to keep your members active.
Step six:
Promotion, if you want members one thing you need is advertising. How much you should spend on it ?
Why should you spend a dollar if you can do it all for free with a bit more work. A great way to promote a forum is by posting in other forums and getting indexed. Also a good way is on Promotion forums like this one. Post exchange, affiliate and other exchanges are very useful for your site.
Sometimes one thread is good enough to bring you 10 members. If you make the right presentation of your website in that thread you can make something out of it.  There are some good exchange programs where you view a site for credits and then with those credits buy traffic for your site. Thats good to increase a bit your visitors count and it may bring you some members
Step seven:
Making money online, that is probably anyone's goal i guess but not my. My goal is to get enough to pay the hosting and then if i can keep the hard work up I will start earning more and more. As a starter you should always try to come up with the money for paying the forum bills first and then something to earn. Best way to earn is like everyone knows ads. Google Adsense is the best even though i am banned there they are great . They pay a lot for a click and can be customized for the forum needs. Another good way is collecting money through donations, services or premium membership offers. For donations i don't have to explain much . Services well for a gaming forum you can give lessons in how to play this game or how to make something, for other forums you can offer to make graphics or add a banner to promote the other forum and so on . Premium membership is a complicated thing since you need to come up with something good to lure the members to pay.  The premium member should always have some good reasons to keep paying the monthly/yearly/lifetime fee.


That would be it if you have any questions pleas post them here I will probably update this when i come up with more tips

[Tony]

I'm going to try this out for my advertising forum. Hopefully it works.

[Shole]

if you need a bit help pm me and i will reply as soon as possible

[Tony]

Ok, will do.

[ian48mendez]

Shole,i read your post really useful...I am going to save this...

[Jacob]

Hey,

I am holding a poll on one of the forums that I administrate to bring back the old tutorials board for making a good forum. With your permission, if we DO end up restoring it, would you mind if we put this tutorial on there if we credited you? That'd be really cool, and if you'd like, you can join. You'll be welcome!