not getting new posts

[ketanco]

it has been a wile since i got new posts on my forum constructforum.com

can anyone try to register and make a post and tell me what is wrong? if any? i really appreciate

[Dave]

Well it just looks like a default vBulletin installation without any theme or plugins installed. The "Forum" tab in the navbar is also a bit messed up.

You may want to consider "pimping" it up a little bit and download a free theme (or find a premium theme somewhere). Maybe you should also install a "like" plugin and perhaps a chatbox?

[HM666]

As for the forum tab being messed up that is probably because you added padding in stylevars for the logo title or it has to do with the advertisements in your header. If you take that out or adjust it, it should fix the menu problem.

I was able to register as LenKaiser and make a test post just fine on the site. So there is nothing wrong with the function of the site it seems, at least not for me.

So I'm assuming that you are having issues with getting people involved on your site and keeping them that way? This is something that pretty much every new forum admin faces. As for keeping people posting you can install mods and install a skin but that is only half the battle. People are not going to post and be active just because it looks really cool and you have some neat mods installed although those sometimes can help. You have to provide content that people are interested in and interested in getting involved in posting on your site. You also need to drive traffic to your site. If people cannot find the site and do not know its out there they surely are not going to post and stay involved in the site. You yourself have to get involved and post. Make sure that your mods and other staff also post regularly. If they do not then many members do not see a reason to post themselves and skip it altogether, after all if the staff is disinterested in the site why should they be? Being an administrator of a forum is not installing it, put a few forums up and sit back and just wait for people to magically find the site and post and love it like you do. Its a LOT of hard work on your part and constant monitoring, changes and adjustments to the forum.

Things I see that you can do to improve the site and things you need to consider doing in order to drive traffic to your site:

1. Scale down the amount of forums you have. When first starting many new admins make the mistake of creating a plethora of forum areas for all the places they "think" they should have on the site. While you see tons of forum areas on big sites in most cases they did not start out that way. When people first visit the site if it looks like there are tons of forum areas and no one posting on them. The forum looks dead therefore those people make a decision right then to not even bother to join your site and become involved and you lose them forever. In a small site the more forum areas you have the less people are going to be involved. As your web site grows and you get many members and they are really active then you can break those forum areas down more adding more specialized forum areas for your members. The best way to do that is to pay attention to what your members post about more, for example .....Building a shed or Building a house. If its a shed they are more interested in then your new forum area would be called "Building Sheds" and so on. If you have a ton of forums to start out with its too overwhelming for new members and its hard to get people to post in all those areas therefore making your web site look like its unmanned.

2. Fix any and all coding, CSS, & skin errors your have like in the case of the tabs menu displaying incorrectly. Pinpoint the reason and fix it. This is something that you need to do every day. As an admin you need to check the site every day and make sure there are no possible coding or other errors on the site hindering members or new possible members from registering, posting and/or getting involved. Keep on top of these things and if you are not savvy enough to fix them yourself, or do not have the time etc then perhaps you should hire someone to implement those types of fixes for you.

3. Advertise your site on like sites if they allow it. Find other sites that are about the same type of topics and post on those sites if its allowed (a lot do not allow it, so make sure its OK first), submit your site to google, yahoo, bing, and other search engines. Submitting a site to a search engine is free to do most of the time and its something that you can do or hire someone to do. Put your site URL in your signature on ANY other forums you visit and post on. Submit your site to link directories, although this practice is somewhat outdated and may or may not get you new members, it will increase the amount of links to your site and possibly help your rankings or at the very least drive some traffic in your direction. You can also try exchanging links with other like minded sites or blogs etc.

4. You do not have to have a nice looking skin on the site, but it helps. I personally would never run a site with the default skin but many do run their sites with it and have no problem in keeping members posting and what have you. Installing a nice looking skin on the site will help it stand out from other similar/like minded sites and makes it easier for people to notice it and remember it kind of like having a favicon. That also helps members find the link easily in their bookmarks. There are free skins, premium skins and custom skins. If you want a skin unique for your own site that is not on any other site then a custom skin would be the choice to make but be prepared to pay for it. Custom skins are not free nor do the good skinners usually only charge you a small nominal fee. Custom skins can be hundreds of dollars depending upon the designer.

5. Install some mods to engage members on the site. I personally would NOT suggest a chatbox as it tends to make people just post in the chatbox and not anywhere else in the forums. From a SEO standpoint a chatbox is futile. Google, Yahoo, Bing etc are not going to grab content from a chatbox and drive traffic to your site, this is what posts, threads & articles are for. Its difficult for admins to keep people from posting questions that really should go in your feedback area and other random things that would of actually made great posts on your forum than in a place where people would have to scroll often to find anything. 100% of your members are probably not going to bother scrolling in a chatbox to see what was said 2 hours ago let alone 10 minutes ago. For your site I would recommend a photo gallery mod. The built in photo albums etc really suck in terms of searching them or finding anything and they are haphazardly put together it seems (kinda like an after thought by vbulletin). A photo gallery mod would allow for your members to organize their before and after construction photos and what have you. There are numerous mods here on vBulletin.org for free so take some time and go through them and I bet you would find some things that make sense for your forum. Make sure that you do not install too many mods as it can be confusing to members if they have too many things to do and check. A lot of your members may not have tons of time to spend on the site so try and keep things simple as possible.

6. I suggest that in your articles that you add photos to your content of the tutorials and/or add videos etc. People respond more to visual things and a photo of someone installing drywall will catch their attention a lot quicker than a lot of text explaining how to install drywall. Yes, of course you need the text but accompany it with some photos from start to finish or even a video.

7. Speaking of videos....get a YouTube account and create & post a new video on your account every week, 2 weeks, month whatever is better for you or have a member dedicated to just doing that as their staff job. Social media can be an important part of driving traffic to your web site. Have a YouTube account that is only for your construction forum site with how to videos. You can put your web site link in the videos (I think) and in your YouTube account. Get a Facebook account for the site and start posting and cross posting from your forums into your Facebook. Get a twitter account and likewise start tweeting on it. There are numerous social networking tools out there just search for them. In your case I would think YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter & Facebook would be your best bets.

8. Create a contest. Contests are a great way of getting people to get involved and bring traffic to your site. It does not have to be a contest where anyone wins anything of monetary value although that is also a good idea but if you do not have the money to front for that sort of thing it can be difficult to do. Be sure that the contest has something to do with your content or construction, building etc.

9. Content is king! I'm sure you have heard this before and you will probably hear it again and again. Make sure that you offer top notch content on your site to drive traffic to it. Offer something of value not just a lot of words on a subject. Check out similar sites to yours and see what they do and do not do. See what works for them and what, you feel, does not. Be sure to offer your members something your competition does not. You will have to find out what that is. Make sure it can easily be included in your site and makes sense with your content. If you offer things the competition does not and have all your other ducks in a row then you are likely to get new members, traffic and posters that stay and become involved on your site and not theirs.

The point is you have to make people want to post on the site and want to get involved. If you offer them nothing you will get nothing in return from them.

I hope this helps you at least get the ball rolling a bit better. :)

[ketanco]

thanks very much for answer, i appreciate
yes i reduced down the number of forums, that was especially a good advice

and where can i get some themes or plugins that you mentioned? for wordpress we get it from wordpress.org. and for vbulletin, where?

[HM666]

thanks very much for answer, i appreciate
yes i reduced down the number of forums, that was especially a good advice

and where can i get some themes or plugins that you mentioned? for wordpress we get it from wordpress.org. and for vbulletin, where?

Actually you can get free ones here on this site just click the "Styles" tab at the top of the page and then hunt for your vB version. Usually those have information on how to install them and what have you. As for plugins you can browse here on this site under the "Mods" tab.

There maybe other places to get free and paid for themes just google vBulletin skins, vBulletin themes and so on you will find plenty more and likely. :)