FORUMFUNDA-Message Board Administrator's Blog

New available domains for forums, just an idea. Not a sale.

2008-07-08T21:13:00.001-07:00

Ok, now let me clear one thing before starting this post. I am not selling any domain names for mine nor i guarantee the availability of the listed domains forever, I searched for more than an hour for some good and potential domains for forums, so if you have any sticking ideas running into your mind about starting a new forum or looking for a good forum domains then my list of some 20 domains can help you. I searched these domains before an hour posting this post on forum funda so if somebody bought it after this then i am not responsible.
So, here is the list of 20 domains i find useful.

LENSCHAT.net -Good for camera or photography enthusiasts.
CAMTALKS.net - Good for camera or photography enthusiasts.
NIKONGEEK.net -Good for camera or photography enthusiasts.
INDIANCRICKETFORUM.net .in - Can go Indian cricket forum.
ALLHULKS.com - Suits for bodybuilding forums.
DISCUSS-D.com -go for domain chat, desi chat etc can use "D" for any suitable niche.
BIKINGTALKS.com - Can go for any biking discussions.
OFFTOPIX.net - for off topic discussions.
INDIAOPENFORUM.com - Indian offtopic or any indian related subjects.
VBTZ.net - good for vbulletin forum themes.
VBSZ.net - vbulletin skinzone.
VB-TALKS.com - vbulletin talks.
HOLLYFORUM.net - You can make Hollywood fans/movies forum
PAGE3TALKS.com -Good for indian tv and movie fans like to gossips
GOSSIPIDEA.net - for gossips and can also make "gossip idea"
GREENISFRESH.org - for veggies or nature lovers
COUNTRYQUEENS.net -perfect for girl's message board.
GENERALKNOWLEDGEFORUM.com -As it says.
GKTALKS.com - Short for general knowledge
PUPPYFORUMS.net - Pets or puppies lovers.

All above domains were available to register till the time i posted this list, i do not guarantee the availability in future, you check the availability of these domains on different registrar websites.
www.name.com
www.domain.com
www.godaddy.com

Zeta Boards themes/skins

2008-07-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

WebSites giving Zeta Board/ Invisionfree Themes:
forumstyles.net
Millennium_Services
levelup-forums.net/
Inkdropstyles.com
gmmzetadesigns
bigboardsresources.com
forum.ifcode.com

Free/Paid skins for IPB and phpbb forums

2008-06-29T23:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Google search engine, i got some good and helpful lists of websites serving in making themes and skins for IPB(Invision Power Board) and phpbb, below are the list of websites giving skins for both free and paid.

www.invisionize.com -IPB

www.gpf-design.com -IPB

www.ipbforumskins.com -IPB

www.invisionpower.eu -IPB

www.theskinnery.com -IPB

www.ipbskinworks.com - IPB

www.extremepixels.net -IPB

www.ipb-skins.org -IPB

www.skinbydragonfly.com -IPB

www.forummonkeys.com -IPB,PHPBB

www.invisionmojo.com -IPB

www.justskins.com -IPB

www.ipbworkshop.com -IPB

www.pankpages.com -IPB, PHPBB

www.mondialskins.com -IPB

www.completegfx.com -IPB, PHPBB

www.skeedio.com -IPB

www.graphicboards.org -IPB

www.gmmskinthemes.net -IPB

www.themesbase.com -phpbb

www.trap17.com -phpbb

www.templatemonster.com -phpbb

www.phpbbhacks.com -phpbb

www.skinz.org -phpbb

www.templatesfactory.net -phpbb

www.perfectory.com -phpbb

www.websitetemplates.bz -phpbb

www.entheosweb.com -phpbb

www.vineyardesigns.com -phpbb

www.tutorialkit.com -phpbb

www.learnwebdesignonline.com -phpbb

www.vectorials.com -phpbb

www.themebot.com -phpbb

www.skinsta.com -phpbb

Can forum makes money?

2008-06-29T22:19:00.000-07:00

This is the one of the most asked question by any forum administrator newly entered into world of message boards. To get the answer of this question I myself researched on various issues, read many forum success stories and different possibilities of earning money through forum. Though I saw most of the forum administrators did not succeeded in earning from forums however there are also many forum success stories which can inspire those who didn’t have the way for making some good bucks. Let me start from the start by asking some questions.

What is your aim before making a forum?

If making money is the only aim you have then better don’t start forums. The first most important thing which comes before starting any community forum is your (Administrator’s) passion and interest on that particular subject or niche of which you are intended to start a community forum. Money won’t start falling from sky as soon as you start a forum.

How much active are you on your own forum?

Notice your own activity and contribution to forum. By contribution I mean to say “making content”. How often you write on your forum? Because, without content no one will going to take pain to see or check your forum even though you invested 100 or 1000$ on forum software, modifications or forum skin/theme. And note this word that without traffic to your forum you can’t even think of earning.

Do you have an Adsense account?

From many years Adsense is a blessing to millions of webmasters and website owners around the globe to get very fair revenue from there respective website, it’s a product of Google and better known as Google Adsense. Its simple to understand that Google will put ads relevant to your forum niche on your message board and will pay you every time the ads get click by the user or visitors to your site. Make sure that click should be genuine and strictly not by you, for sure Google is smarter then you. To get more detailed information check out www.google.com/adsense

How to get traffic to your forum?

As said above without traffic your dream of earning could not be fulfilled and to build traffic the first and most important thing is making good informative and useful content. The second thing is generating traffic and there are many effective ways to do that, some easiest ways are

Join many different community forums and start putting your own forum URL on the signature of those communities if the owner/admin allows you and most of the time no one has any issue with that. This will help you generating traffic to your forum in 2 different ways, 1^st it will get noticed by the members of those community and 2^nd is spiders of those community forums will put your signature link on search engines. It won’t work unless you post good and quality threads or topics on those forums too, as much as you can.

There are hundreds of free forum directories where you can submit your forum link and description, its really work well in generating traffic.

Social networking sites can help you in generating a mass of people on your community board but it need a very fair trick, don’t spam people with “request to join your forum” or an “irritating advertisement” the best way is take help from your friends on those social networking sites first. Then the other way is making a community or group dedicated to your forum where you can ask people to join those groups and talk about your community or can ask any questions regarding your community forum. Win there trust and they will join your message board.

Social bookmarking is really a very good way in generating very genuine and interested people you can use your own way but I suggest you to start a simple blog on blogger.com which is free and write useful and informative articles about your community forum, your goal and keep on updating that blog as your official forum blog and submit those articles to social bookmarking sites like dig.com. squidoo.com, technorati.com, blogcatalog.com, propeller.com, stumbleupon.com.

When I will get my 1^st Adsense check?

Not after a week or 2 but could take months, I don’t want to discourage you but if you know how to do business then you very well know that profit don’t start coming on the next day of your business, you should be patient and keep up your spirit and passion so your forum members will also not loose there interest on your newly started community.

I tried to cover all basic, most important and necessary points to get earnings from community forum for newbie forum administrator. To repeat in simple points it would be like this

Content
Promotion/Marketing
Google Adsense
Building traffic ( Signature link, Directories, Social networking, Social bookmarking, Blog)

For some more advance users there are many other ways like Google adwords, affiliate marketing, text link ads, link exchange etc which I will try to cover in my next article on Can forum makes money-2

For an inspiration I would like to recommend you this link where you can find many real success stories of forum administrators and my favourite among all is Lee Dodd so don’t forget to read Lee’s success story.

Where do you get vbulletin skins? (free and paid)

2008-06-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

Forum skins is the most important part to be worked out before starting forum or if you want to change your present theme with something more better, there are many choices of free and paid skins for vbulletin forum, I tried to search and found some useful sites serving free and paid forum skins specially for vbulletin users.

Below links of some sites which offers both free and paid skin service so please have a look and find suitable site for you. In my next post I will submit all the site giving skin service for forums like phpbb, IPB, SMF, mybb etc.

www.vBXtra.com

www.vBStyles.com

www.transversestyles.com

www.vBulletinskinz.com

www.mpdesignz.com

www.advancedskins.com

www.sixteenohnine.com

www.freevbulletintemplates.org

www.bulletinskins.com

www.extremepixels.com

www.2theme.com

www.skinsta.com

www.yourskinner.com

Please submit more links if i missed anything.

Forum Administrator's Community- Big help for newbies

2008-06-23T23:24:00.000-07:00

You happily started a community forum, it’s a first time you got the feeling of an owner or an administrator, now a whole message board is yours and of course its yours because you invested some hundreds of dollars purchasing an owned license of a forum software, hosting space and a domain name, may be a new forum skin too. Now you are ready to run it, you made some categories and plenty of forums whatever came in your mind. You did posting and invited some close friends of yours and they did some activities as well.

A whole week sitting for long hours noticing every small and big activity of your forum and making some posts you got succeeded in making 20 people registering on your board, I know its not at all enough! And soon you felt bore and loosing patience and seeing your dream making a big successful community is sinking. If I am right till now then keep on reading may be this could help you.

Most of the newbie forum administrator face this problem so no need of getting depressed or embarrassed, there are many ways of making your discussion board a happy going community but I will only shed some light on Forum Administrator’s Community. Yes if you missed forum administrators community then let me tell you that these communities are the best school for any new forum administrator.

There are plenty of discussions going on these communities by thousands of new, advanced and expert forum administrators sharing there experience, knowledge, tips and tricks, they also help new administrators to give a good push on there newly created community forum by post exchange, link exchange and different useful articles and reviews.

I came across 3 such communities in past and I often visit and post some replies still in all 3. The one and my favorite is TheAdminzone.com, Its quite BIG community of forum administrators with plenty of useful articles, interviews, reviews, tips and discussions going on, members are helpful, dedicated, professionals and some are really a big personalities in the world of Message Board Administration.

The other 2 are admin fusion and earners forum, earnerforum is merged with webmaster-talk.com few months before, these communities can give you a wider perspective on managing and administrating forum board with a very professional and intelligent way.

Indian Community Forums- My prediction

2008-06-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

I wonder why Forums and message boards are not so popular in India as compared to western and eastern countries of the world. I tried to find the reason to my question and explored many good forums in India but still popularity is lacking. If I look on the other side for eg. Blogs then I noticed that from last one year blogs are doing very good in India though little bit late then other developed countries but still its going good nowadays since people understood the definition of blogs and some media attention towards Indian bollywood celebrity’s blog. Many of you may be aware how Indians follows everything of there favourite bollywood superstars then why not copying there new online blogging hobby?

This one particular example of blogs made me think about forums and future of forums in India. I think it will take little more time to get the popularity waves for message boards and community forums like how any teen age American or European kid start his own forum according to his hobby or likes and invites his/her friends to join and it is a start of a community. Be it there favourite wwe stars or most liked video games discussions. Still most of the Indian teens who use internet in most of there spare times hangs out in social networking sites or downloading free games or music.

There are many good Indian forums exists but most of them or I think all of them what I saw are based on education, career, cricket or bollywood. I never came across any Indian forum like gaiaonline.com a world’s largest community forum where anytime more than 30k people gets online, Gaia is really an entertainment forum for mostly kids and teenaged guys and gals for discussing anime, manga, flash games, virtual avatars etc. If we go more deep inside to find reasons for why Indian forums are only forums and not community than many more reasons will arise but I have feelings from heart that soon after blogosphere Indian internet users will be busy in making forums or making more posts in there friend’s forums.

Indian car lovers on team-bhp

2008-06-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Team-BHP.com Review

While searching for the next forum for a review my intention was basically to find an Indian Forum Board which is highly active with full of useful content and lots of activities among the members and while surfing on subdreamer.com a CMS providing site I noticed link of team-bhp.com as there client and thought to visit it, that time I was unaware of its location or what exactly it is but I got that its an Indian Message Board for all automobile enthusiasts.

I was impressed after reading the history of team-bhp.com that how it started with a couple of friends met online and made there first hangout on msn group to talk about cars and later moved to a free forum board and finally to a bigger shape and also the size.

A very well customized forum for people who love speed, luxury over wheels and to show off there road runner team-bhp is a complete portal for everything related to automobiles, from a review of new car to the suggestions and a community discussions deeply about there experiences and all technical issues related to Indian automobile arena. The home page of team-bhp is giving the first impression with cool graphics and color combination perfectly matches the theme and fit to the purpose of the site. On the submenu navigation two features which really impressed me was “Test drive” and “Advice” . By clicking on test drive a visitor can see a page where there is an option to choose car brands and models basically those cars which are available in India, by selecting the car of your choice and model you can read a detail review written by the owner with upto 10 years of personal experience of that car. This is something very new and looks authentic and different in comparison to other media or automobile review related websites. Moving to next feature when you roll your mouse on “Advice” you will get a drop down with some links like on buying, on owning, on modifying and misc actually its full of articles on different areas of interest related to cars and modifications of cars. One more interesting feature is “Tuner” which is unique and I think first to get in any Indian automobile website. It’s a directory of many tuners and companies / organizations based in different cities of India, which is very easy to find the best for your need. Moving further on the forum part of team-bhp.com any one can figure it out the activity by scrolling down till bottom to see the online stats where you will find more than 1000 visitors every time you visit this site. A very well organized and managed different category of forums and threads one can easily navigate through it, the forum is open to guest visitors so there are tons of important and informative threads which can help you even without taking that small pain of registration. Forum is full of crazy car enthusiast and successfully made a very strong and friendly community around. To the technical part of the forum its made on Vbulletin forum software but not the upgraded version, I guess if they upgrade it with the latest 3.7 then this forum can make more great achievements, well its really doesn’t matter much if the criteria of the admin is different and till team-bhp is powered by those powerful BHPians than I don’t think anyone can shake them up for another 5-10 years.

I really like to hangout on off-topic area where there is so many cool, entertaining and some very important discussions( not cars) going on, That’s a perfect example of a community, because what I know is making a forum into a message board is simpler than making a message board into a community, team-bhp is rocking forum and definitely a rocking future, to the readers of this review I would like to suggest that if you are a new administrator to any forum please do visit team-bhp , I am not any advertisers or promoter of any forum but I would like to help all those who wants there forum to be a successful community, team-bhp is one of my favorite and will remain.

Zeta Board Theme Zone- A review of a great community forum

2008-06-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

ZBTZ is very popularly known as Invisionfree Skin Zone (IFSZ) is now known as Zeta Board Theme Zone since the change of a name of Invisionfree message board to Zeta Boards. This is my review to one of the most successful forum board community I ever came across.

Look and Feel

A very professionally designed and arranged forum which sooths your eyes. ZBTZ is one of the most attractive and beautiful forum in my view, though it has very few modifications installed but it is very easy to navigate and browse this BIG BOARD. Since I am the member of this forum I saw two major skin changes and both are the best invisionfree skinners can give. The forums are arranged very nicely to search or browse any particular forum topics and I must say that this is the forum where one will never feel bore to stay online.

Content and Member’s activities

More than 200K of members from all over the world had gave there valuable time making this board a power pack of content related to invision free forum board skins, graphics, modifications, hacks and general discussions, I was surprised to see the activities of members on this board when I was very new to forum board administration, it was difficult to understand for me that why anyone will give so much time without getting any benefit but I was wrong, the members of ZBTZ enjoys every bit of the board either it’s to show off there newly made skins or graphics or they are busy burning there brain in brain juice forum where they debate on really mature topics and current issues of world. The flowing of posts increase there social circle and knowledge both, I admit that ZBTZ is not a message board only but it’s a very strong and equally beautiful community of mostly teenagers.

There are many good forums providing services same like ZBTZ but most of them failed to make there forum board a community because members joins for a purpose of getting free skins or a modification code for there forum and leave the board as soon as there purpose get solved but story is different for ZBTZ, here members keep on visiting and posting even after there main purpose of joining this forum is already solved and that’s the key to success of ZBTZ which has a strong members community who are really addicted to this superb forum of invision free.

Besides the general activities and discussions the ZBTZ community have lots of competitions and tournaments to boost the spirits of there members who show off there skills and arts in different field of graphics and skin designing. And get rewarded with gifts and prizes.

Service and Moderation

A great example of team management, leadership, dedication, coordination and love for ZBTZ is found in every staff of this community from the post of Administrator to the moderators, it look like a big bunch of teenage professionals handling a multi billion dollar company where they are getting paid thousands of dollars every week but that’s not a fact because all staff of ZBTZ are working voluntarily and don’t charge a single cent for there service. kudos! To the great staff of ZBTZ, there work really impressed each and every member of the community.

The special thing I like is one who left the team will be honored as a “retire” member and even leaving the team officially that member will be still giving his support and service unofficially, now the question is who are these dedicated staff? And why they are so dedicated? And the answer I got is these people are crazy and thirsty gang of artists and c coders who are passionate about graphics and skins and forum administration and they enjoy every bit of it while making skins and codes for others with no charge in return.

Link: http://s2.zetaboards.com/ifskinzone/index/

Forum Moderator, Duty with responsiblity

2008-04-04T07:10:00.000-07:00

Forum Moderator or simply a mod is a person who has some special powers than normal member of the forums given by forum Administrator. Lets see what Wikipedia has to say about The Moderator.

A Forum Moderator, often shortened to just mod, is a person granted special powers to enforce the rules of an internet forum (message board) or electronic mailing list. Almost all moderators on all forums can move discussions to different sections of the forum, close discussions, edit the content of individual postings, answer questions (or help people with problems), and stick discussions so they remain visible in their forum section even if no new postings are made to them. Different forums may give their moderators further powers, such as being able to block/ban people from the message board.

Being a Moderator to any forum is a job of responsibility and trust, trust which the Administrator have on his moderator. On many ways moderator plays an important role in the growth of whole community forum. I am trying to write this article which can help moderators to play there role more efficiently with some important points keeping in mind which I am sharing it here.

When you get this good news on your Personal Message (PM) by your Administrator, “You are appointed as the Moderator of our community forum; hope you will take this responsibility”

The first things you do is reply with your heart and give your thanks to the Admin for giving you this opportunity. Now follow these guidelines:

1. Being the moderator of any community forum you should be aware of each and every activities going on inside the forums, who posted today, who replied where and what? And who came online, I understand that this is a tough job and sometimes impossible to have track on everything for big community boards with high traffic and activities but “try your level best”

2. Understand that appointed you as a mod of the forum your Administrator put his trust on you that you are going to do your duty and responsibility with truth, hard work and perfection, so please don’t break the Admin’s trust.

3. Be friendly but not over friendly with members of your community, do not entertain members by giving them support via Personal Message unnecessary when you can do that by posting in forums.

4. Don't be rude or get frustrated to the questions of members, its there right to ask you and that’s your part of duty to answer and support them.

5. Being a mod doesn't mean that you only "move, edit, delete posts or warn members" Keep making new quality post which encourage users to reply that and make your contribution in user’s started thread, give them a bunch of flower icons or clap icons for every good post they make.

6. Keep in touch with Admin and inform him about your activity or ideas you get into your mind in the favour of the community forum.

7.Being as mod doesn’t mean that every one in forum should listen to you, be down to earth and keep ego in your dustbin, if get frustrated have a glass of water but don’t show attitude to users.If you cant solve any problem contact to the Administrator immediately and ask his help, he has best authority to look on the matter.

8. The Admin appointed you and while doing so he guided you with work he has given you, don’t do more than that to impress him…you can even loose your reputation by doing so.

9.Be punctual and keep yourself online in forum whether you find your admin offline, give you admin a break for sometime because he knows that you are there to help him.

10. If you have supporting moderator or colleague than be friendly with them but be away from gossips, jealousy, politics and things which may take your community forum into a wrong way.

11.Dont argue with your colleague in forum board where other members and guests can also read it, it will show a bad impression for you and your team which will going to effect the whole forum site which comes up with the hard work of your Admin.

12. Give your time to off topics also and forget for sometime that you are mod, be like a member and play some light forum games too. It will make good and healthy relations with others.

My guide to be a successful forum administrator

2008-04-01T07:50:00.000-07:00

Administration to any forum based community is a challenge and hard work comes with dedication and patience which will give you a positive results to your community forums, this is a easy guide to any forum administrator if started a new forum or going through a less or zero activity on his/her board. I am trying to write what I understand and believe after being a member , admin and mod for several forums from last 3 years. Hope this will help somehow.

Ask these questions to yourself

Q1. What your forum is all about?

Q2. What are you giving to the visitors and members of your site?

Q3. Why anybody will join your forum?

Q4. Who is your competitor/rival and what he is giving to his members?

Q5. What different and unique you are giving than your rival/competitor?

Q6. How much your forum site is user friendly? Did you ever been a member to any community forum?

If you have answers to all of the questions above than continue reading…

Someone typed the URL of your forum and made a first visit, stand for a while and searched some ongoing discussions and topics, after reading some he finds it useful and decided to register, next time same person when got logged in asked his friends to join your forum too, you received some clicks and good activities, all forum Administrator want the same thing which I wrote but not all get succeed in doing so because of many reasons.

Like…

your site is dull and dead with no activities, posts etc.
your forum skin color is pathetic
the domain name is hard to remember or very un professional
spammers made there second home your forum.

Some important points to note while administrating forums which could help you in improving your venture.

YOUR USERS: They are your backbone, give them freedom, give them honor and respect and make them feel comfortable in your forum, your site should be user friendly, attractive, add some cool mods and hacks, do some competitions and games to entertain your users.

Keep in touch with them through mass e-mails but don’t make it often or it will consider as spam.

YOUR PASSION: Your love and craziness for your forum is very important, you should be the most active member of your community than anyone else. Put your every effort in doing study and research on your forum theme which it is built on.

YOUR DEDICATION: “you made it and they do it” its wrong, “you made it and you have to do it’’ yeah ! that’s right! If you think that you made forum set the categories and everything now people will come and start posting than you are absolutely wrong because no one will do anything till they wont get anything, so make a useful content for your forum which will help the guest visitors and new members to have read. This will somehow make them to register or to post atleast “Thanks” to you and this will be there start.

YOUR PATIENCE: You wont get 100,000 members in 1 month, sometimes you will also notice that you are the only one in your forum from last 1-2 weeks and that will be a hard test for you where you can easily loose hope but don’t do this mistake, hold on and think what happen wrong and where? Try to overcome the mistake and start again but have patience, according to many professional’s interviews and articles I read I come to know that any forum will take about 6 to 8 months to grow and become active.

YOUR ATTITUDE: If you are an Administrator than don’t think that members are your employee, infact members are higher than you because if they don’t exist your forum don’t exist too. Be friendly, supportive and understanding with your members, try to listen to there every queries and questions and come up as soon as possible with necessary actions or answers, if you don’t make your users happy you will loose your forum soon.

YOUR ACTIVITY: Its an oxygen to your forum, keep your members busy by giving them something new to talk, read or to discuss, find what your members are interested in? for eg if you own a sports forums than don’t start a topic related to politics or animals rights because you have members with almost same interests for sports and nothing else. Keep off topic forum to talk anything else but don’t talk or make posts which bore them.

YOUR STAFF: Your mods are the one who plays a major role in your absence, appointing them is giving them a responsibility, be professional and bit friendly with them, give them honor and reward for there good work and guide them if they go anywhere wrong, it will be best if you get a moderator with same mind like you, moderator should know what administrator wants from them. Keep a close eye on a newly appointed mod, his activity inside forum and outside if possible.

KEEP UPDATED: Keep yourself updated with latest news, technology or your forum topic related subjects, keep on visiting good informative sites and other forum boards to know whats new going on.

Forums can be a happiest place to hang around if the Administrator keeps these things in mind and implement it on right time.

After purchasing vbulletin, a guide to CMS and Skin selection

2008-03-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

So you finally purchased vbulletin, welcome to the vb family! now what you will do after making some categories and forums? Here is some useful guidelines for adding some cool and useful mods and skins.

CMS: Your forum board can change into a portal look if you go for a CMS and VBadvanced is best, its easy to install and use,and its free check out THIS.
If you are more advanced user and want to have custom pages than one beautiful, clean mode i would like to recommend and that is Web Template which you can find in vbulletin.org,click THIS.

SKIN: Look is important everywhere and we all know that first impression is last impression, the visitor to you forum will first notice the look and color of your board and than read anything else, your forum should look according to theme you have, there are many professional skin service providers who can give you good service but if you dont want to spend anything or want to spend a little than the best advice is search on vbulletin.org's styles where you can get plenty of free and good skins, check out this
And if you are ready to spend a little amount for a more better service than i didnt find anything simple and best than Peggy's Themes by design, she is supportive, professional and true to her work with dedication and perfection, you can even check her free skins too, her paid service is very affordable and better than those big boys, http://www.themesbydesign.net/

If you are willing to pay more for CMS & skins than there are many more options you can go for

CMS

SKINS

There are many more skin service providers are available, you can get there links through vbulletin.com and vbulletin.org sites.

If you want to start a forum.

2008-03-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

Forum making is very easy if you have some money to invest, but the challenge comes when your forum get live on web and you need people to come then register, then post and then come back again with other friends of there to join them on your community, I am writing some points well not in detailed but can be helpful for beginners to start and dev there community forums.

Idea: Idea can really change your life, think something unique, useful and attractive..get advise from your very very near ones and graph it on a paper, forums are many, with many common subjects and theme..think how you will stand with something new and different than others?

Patience: I advise not to start dreaming about having a big forum community of you dont know the word patience.

Write: "Content is the key" This word is repeated in most of the articles written by some great forum Admins in every admin boards, without content your forum is like a tummy without food, content is the energy of your forum so keep on writing, It will be best if your contents are original and if you copy paste than dont forget to give links to resource or you could be in problem somewhere.

Read: Keep doing research on different things which may help you to make your forum more active, read articles, discussions and resources, Google it and get it.

Signature Trick: "You will give you will get" start posting good quality posts on other forums of your interests, register in more than 5 big communities and put your forum link on your signature and keep on posting, make it in your schedule and see the results in 1 week, google it and see how many back links you generated by this.

"You can sell anything if you know to talk" a very famous phrase from marketing world, this can be helpful to promote your forum, talk to people around you, your friends, relatives, colleagues..These are the people who will going to give a good start up to your community.

Dont loose confidence when see your board going dull after a start, any forum will take minimum 3-6 months to get a proper start so keep on doing the things which is written above ;)

Indian Forum Boards

2008-03-30T07:23:00.000-07:00

Forums and Message boards are not too much popular in India yet some Indian forum Administrators made there way to forums successfully, though most of the forums are resource boards and related to bollywood chat still there is a need of awareness to Indian internet users to make them use of forums.

Following are 10 forums of India or it is managed by an Indian Admin.

For Management Students---http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/

Entertainment---http://forums.ratedesi.com/

Indian Television Shows---http://india-forums.com/

Student's resource and offtopic---http://www.studentshangout.com/

For Management Students---http://www.managementparadise.com/

Sneaker's Review---http://www.solereview.com

Automobile Enthusiasts---http://www.team-bhp.com

Web Master Resource---http://www.geekpoint.net

Offtopics---http://www.apnicommunity.com

Offtopics---http://www.apnaspace.com

Curves of Life- How small members can make a strong community?

2008-03-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

There are millions of forums online today on common niche like Games, Sports, Web dev resources, fun and entertainment, most of them are professionally built on paid software, dedicated hosting and lots of sponsor ads to generate revenue, Administrators are busy generating traffic, Monetizing and lots of hard work in improving there PR, CPM, CTR etc. In these some forums are made for the more social reason to help others without making much investments or worries about the earnings and traffic, Curves of Life is one of them, the founder and Admin of the forum is a mother of three teenagers and herself recovering from a pelvic reconstruction and lower spinal fusion. Jules with some good and close friends came up with a meeting point online to discuss the issues of health and weigh loose discussion and way of healthy life on a forum which is hosted free on invisionfree forum software which is free hosting. A small board with not more than 30+ members are strong enough to make a good small but strong community of more than 12,580 posts.

Jules if not worried about how much she get from Curves of Life, she is more intended in how much she can give to Curves of Life, she teaches, she advised and she loves her board and board members and thats the key to make a strong community whether its small or big, Curves of Life keeps its members busy in several activities going around in forum board, they all love to talk, love to share there views and thoughts and it really helps members and guest visiting that community and reading some mature discussions of health and life.I can say that members of Curves of Life share more emotional side of each other which make there relation strong enough to give life to a small non-profit community.

Curves of Life can teach other forum Administrators that its not important how much is your board statistics and members registered, even if you have 10 members and all are active than its enough to make a useful and large content of posts and articles, its on you as an admin that how you keep your members busy and how you make them come again and again on your forum.

Curves of Life's members mostly either having weight problem or come up with there problem after successfully loosing some extra calories are proud and happy to share there motivational and inspirational stories to help other members who are still fighting with there health problem. Members are backbone to any forum board and its members only who will keep the show go on and on. Salute to members and admin of Curves of Life for there remarkable work for each other and touching the lives of many.

Solereview's review

2008-03-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

You will see him giving advices and helps in getting good sneakers, tips for keeping your sneakers safe and clean, writing reviews on sneakers and everything about sneakers, he is a crazy champ who surf on orkut.com's every communities dedicated to talk of sneakers either its adidas, nike, converse or puma. Sneakerologist is a man behind the first Indian and probably world's first sneaker's review site and discussion forums with most of the members are crazy for sneakers and trust there Admin(Sneakerologist) for advices, reviews and tips, its www.solereview.com.

I am also a member of solereview. Me and sneakerologist share a good friendship as we are from same profession of forum Administration, I am sure he never thought that so soon some one will try to write review on his site, so here is my personal thoughts and review on www.solereview.com.

Look: Present skin of solereview is simple but clean, it can be more attractive if the colors can be changed into something more bright and sporty.

Contents: No doubt in the authenticity of solereview's review on sneakers as it is written by snearkerologist himself and he is the best and craziest man i ever seen who is so much mad but seriously knowledgeable about sneakers.

Members and Forum activities: Not too much for the start, members are more interested in reading the reviews, i think there should be a change of forums and categories, more off topics are needed which will encourage members to post and keep on post which is the key to forum's life.

It will be very early to write some more points on solereview but i am sure that sneakerologist will get a good response in coming days because of his knowledge and uniqueness of the site, the passion he has for sneakers and his hundreds of fans and supporters :) Most of the Indian community forums are based on bollywood or technological talks but forums like solereview is a very new and different concept than others.

All over solereview is one of the upcoming forums which will hopefully hit the big-boards.com's lists very soon.

All the best to my friend sneakerologist...:)

My journey to forums

2008-03-28T07:37:00.000-07:00

Its was the year 2006 when i was first introduced by a forum, It was the same time when i also come to know about social networking sites, the first site which i joined was friendster.com and from there one of my friend passed me the link of myspace.com, soon that attracts me so much that social networking became part of my life, while being active on social networking site i came in contact with a friend who was into forums and asked me to moderate his new forum, i was totally unknown to this word "forum" still i checked the link and saw a board with a long list of categories and topics, anyhow i register in it and tried looking out what exactly it is, after some lurking i logged out and never came back :)
After a month while searching on one resource i got a link of one forum and when i saw it, it was a damn busy forum with lots of activities and knowledgeable contents, Thanks to my bookmarks link where i saved that forum URL which my friend gave me, i came back again to that forum and saw in bottom it was written "hosted for free by invisionfree" "powered by invision power board". I clicked the link of invisionfree, it was the start of my Administration to forums i understood that its a forum software and anyone can make his/her forum for free and i made one forum for my friends, i want to tell you that i never learned HTML, javascript or any website designing or dev related softwares or subjects, it was just a passion for forum made me do many things by my own.
After creating a community i saw people's response which was surprisingly great! my friends, family and people around me were so much encouraging to me and the result was a active community of mine through invisionfree, i give credits to invisionfree to teach me a lot about forums and HTML, the support was great and the invisionfree community was so friendly as well.
On the professional point i was still unaware that how someone can earn through forums and what is SEO, adsense, pagerank etc.till i come to know that other than invisionfree there are many more softwares for forum building and my research and studies for forums became more deeper day by day and i decided to start a web business, that time i was on full time job of marketing in an import-export firm in Mumbai, India. It took more than a year to make up my mind and i left my full time job and turned my mind into forum administrating.
My first community was bohrachat.com which is no more as it was on invisionfree and some personal problem i switched it off, my next move was to decide between IPB(Invision power board) and Vbulletin softwares and it took 1 months of research and comparison between two i decided to purchase vbulletin as it is the easiest and one of the most popular forum software available, i started giving my time to community forums of vbulletin and related forums where i can learn more about this software and ways to make community from more professional and technical points, i am still a learner and i mostly learned from my own failures and mistakes i made in several attempts of making forums, theadminzone, adminfusion and geekpoint are some great sites which are still helping me a lot on forum building and development, the other sites which i really like to recommend is Lee dodd's earnersforum.
Forums are the only the best way to get resource, either education, business, articles and discussion on any subject or issues and to make a great forum the one best point is get active to other forums by writing and reading and giving useful resource, i should not forget to write here that you should be passionate about forums to be a successful forum administrator.