Advice for a beginner webmaster

ZandraJoi

ZandraJoi

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What advice would people give to someone who is just starting out in having their own forum? Are there any tips & tricks that help the process go smoothly? My forum is just under a year old & I find I’m always learning new things. While I doubt I’ll be good at coding, just don’t have the knack, I do enjoy having a forum.
 
ZandraJoi said:
Are there any tips & tricks that help the process go smoothly?
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Actually pay up for your website hosting as that is like your "house" to your site. You wouldn't house yourself in a $10k home I am right? So why would you go for that Super Unlimited 99 cents a month or $5/year website hosting plan?
 
Did mine six years ago and I was new but at the same time, I seemed to know what I was doing.
  1. Plain on what your sire is going to be, Name, domain name and write everything down. Taken be almost 4 weeks of thinking and planning.
  2. Find the right host for you, Start with shared as it's cheaper to start with, take your time looking for the right host and also buy the domain. The first step will take out your money.
  3. Once the server is up, and maybe you talked to people to help and join your team, I did get one other with me and another who is a member helped with the funds.
  4. Forum software, by now you would have the software that you want to use, Free or paid, I start with free and I learn and watched and made so much posting on the support forums and once you have your software, look into the addons that you might want to use.
  5. spend a day or more installing, then work on the building of the site, for me around 4 weeks before the opening and so I had 4 good weeks to work on the site and look into the theme,
  6. post and get content going before the opening and get FaceBook and Twitter accounts open.
 
Empire said:
spend a day or more installing, then work on the building of the site, for me around 4 weeks before the opening and so I had 4 good weeks to work on the site and look into the theme,
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Installing generally take 5 to 15 minutes not a day. CONFIGURING it might depending on how extensive the software is and how in depth your going with forums' and/or user permission structures and such.

Empire said:
post and get content going before the opening
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Beyond a few threads for rules and such I do not think this is REQUIRED. Better to get engaged users in the first place who can instead and you take part of organic discussions. Instead of solely you being and admin spewing out countless topics.

Empire said:
get FaceBook and Twitter accounts open.
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I really doubt this, think of WHY would they care to join a forum when they could go to a Facebook group/page or a Twitter page instead?

Just because a site is content rich doesn't means you should run a dump truck to there. You gotta UNDERSTAND if your users gonna care about those contents and if they are gonna click "register" on your site or just "hit and run" because your not a Social Media site.
 
FriendlyPerson said:
Installing generally take 5 to 15 minutes not a day. CONFIGURING it might depending on how extensive the software is and how in depth your going with forums' and/or user permission structures and such.
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Installing doesn't take long at all for most forums software, it's setting up the forums, gallery, groups ranks, permissions and list goes on, even with the theme you maybe spending time editing the theme in the backend.

FriendlyPerson said:
Beyond a few threads for rules and such I do not think this is REQUIRED. Better to get engaged users in the first place who can instead and you take part of organic discussions. Instead of solely you being and admin spewing out countless topics.
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I was meaning by that is, before opening the site up fully to the public is to get members to come over and get content going:) many people did that they went to forum promotion get and to hire people to post on their site,

FriendlyPerson said:
I really doubt this, think of WHY would they care to join a forum when they could go to a Facebook group/page or a Twitter page instead?

Just because a site is content rich doesn't means you should run a dump truck to there. You gotta UNDERSTAND if your users gonna care about those contents and if they are gonna click "register" on your site or just "hit and run" because your not a Social Media site.
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It's just the promotion side of it, HAve your site logo and whatnot all over the place and when there is a new feed posting on the forum it gets twittered out there. with hasttages. It's another way of advertisement, even then in most cases when you make a new account it's pretty dead anyway.
 
Demon_skeith said:
Be very extremely patient, be ready for dead days and busy days. No matter what, give up.
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I think the most important thing is to just keep at it. Basically, what Demon has already mentioned above. There are going to be some tough times for a forum, especially at the start but the most important thing to do is to not give up. Keep at it, work on your forum, and hopefully after a while, you'll have enough of a core membership to have an active forum
 
Ash said:
I think the most important thing is to just keep at it. Basically, what Demon has already mentioned above. There are going to be some tough times for a forum, especially at the start but the most important thing to do is to not give up. Keep at it, work on your forum, and hopefully after a while, you'll have enough of a core membership to have an active forum
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Taken over 10 years for me to get a core group, with some days of my forum being dead like a graveyard.
 
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