Great guide - Good job!

Actually, I think another part of this is a bit out-of-date: most search engines nowadays DO read text inside images. At least, Google does.

well it was posted 3 years ago..

Google reading text inside images? I highly doubt it. If you are referring to image search, that searches the alternate text and surounding text. :-)

I at one time lived by all these rules. On my second forum nonw, almost a 1000 members. 1 rule that I have broken that I think makes it better is this one.

2. Always allow guests to view your site. You may get many registrations if you turn off guest viewing, but virtually nobody will post because the majority of registrants will simply view your site and leave.

I have found that if you have automatic login prechecked, the ability to show only post topics and not bodies, and make people to sign in that you will
1. Get more registrations (which is a no brainer)
2. Get more posts per user (has increased by 4 since I required)
3. Have a more active forum in other areas.

The second thing I have found that I don't agree with now is this one.
11. Always stay up to date on your version of vBulletin. There are literally no exceptions to this. Always use the absolute latest stable (non-beta and non-RC) version which contains the latest security and bug fixes.

My suggestion is not to use the newest one. Use a stable one. Use it for awhile, if you have alot of hacks on your board, don't change it. It will only cause headaches.

The Multi-Admin setup ONLY works if all the admins are completely on the same page. If you go that route you need to clearly define everyone's role from the beginning. The important part is to know who is going to retain the rights to the webspace if a separation or demotion is necessary...

I speak from experience that you need to have from the onset a protocol for dealing with a possible falling out. It will be much easier to part ways if you have openly discussed the doomsday scenario...

I agree that only one person should have absolute access to the domain...

As one who is a second admin on one forum and root admin on another, I can understand the retisence of making admins, but it can be handy some times if you are not able to go online for any reason, at least your site can be 'looked after' but there has to be trust otherwise it wouldn't work well.

What does make it hard is if you are admin and the root admin dissappears on you, and can not be contacted. This has happened to me. And as the site was failing for want of a root admins attention, I ended up starting up again alone. And I am pleased to say we are still going!

So there are good and bad things in any relationship, is basically what I am saying. ;)

In my opinion the worst thing you can do is neglect your site. If you do not have the time to make sure things are going smoothly then notify your members that you are going to take the forum down. I know of some sites that look legit, but have been havens for rip of artists and such. Although these people aren't the owners, they are letting it happen. I hate seeing stuff like that.

Two concerns:

1 "Dont pretend you are someone else". I am going to start my forum in a week or so and planned on making like 50 screennames, start making threads and posts and stuff, and change the dates around to make the forum look like it's been around for a couple weeks. I would probably spend a few days on this. This way, people will join because it looks to be a relatively popular forum. No one wants to join a forum with onnly 3 other members :cool:

2. "Stay true with your ban and dont give any explanation when rebanning." I actually had a case some time ago when I was banned unfairly, but the mods followed this rule and did not listen to me when I had created another screenname and just rebanned me with no explanation. I can understand this if the user is obviously a troll. But always?

Other than that, great rules of thumb!

Nice tutorial, though the part about 800x640 and 56k is outdated; broadband is way more common, especiallyi n Europe, not to mention the increase of 1024x768 usage.

This is a great thread, every new community should follow it! Sorry for bumping and old, there isnt many posts in this board but! An addon to number 3 is search engines cant crawl if you disable guest views!

I would just like to add to this, dont allow name changes. They create confusion, and just are generally a hassle.

1. True, and no one can argue for banning them, as all they do is generally positive.

2. So true. There are scenarios (such as sensitive issues and private forums) where you don't want this, but if you are running a non controversal, normal site, this is something to think about. Never stop guests viewing your forum, and if you don't, also never stop them viewing topics either.

3. Cannot say, but I still know more people on broadband connections than dial up, and the resolution thing is a bit old fashioned.

4. Ditto. You don't know how often I use stats like how many members joined since the forum opened and how long it has been around for to decide when to join. Just one advantage of letting guests view profiles is that you can let them work out how active the forum is from stuff like that. I do wish contact information could be made private but not all of the profile though. Just e-mail and IM information. And yes, the best way to encourage guests is to keep cool features like the arcade to the members only.

5. So true. I do this a lot myself, and on every forum I ever registered to. Failure to do this ends your forum on the same note as that forum with 122 members and only 22 posts... the forum graveyard. And failure to keep involved as an admin leads to either a dead forum or a state of anarchy/civil war. I have seen this happen too often...

6. Agreed.

7. Also agreed. To add to this, partial network banning could also accidentally ban a whole school/workplace/college/library/internet cafe as well, which would ruin access to your forum for those depending on such places.

8. I have no idea about this, because it causes a conflict of theories and ideas in a psychological and philosophical sense.

9. I disagree. True with a small forum, but any large forums do need more than one staff member with this kind of power. Do you really think many of the largest communities online (Offtopic, Gamefaqs, IGN, etc) could be run with one administrator? Some are corporate, but many actually high non paid admins because of need as well.

10. Honestly, I have no idea why a HTML allowed option even exists, because the option unfiltered is website suicide. Makes me think of a certain forum I used to go to which accidentally allowed iframe code and someone inserted shock pictures in topic titles...

11. Also true. I have seen instances of vBulletin 3.0 and 3.5 being run, which is just slightly insecure. I also remember a site once still running vBulletin 2.

12. Sadly this is a very common problem and materialist attitude, as far too many people think that by adding one more thing, doing one more thing or buying one more thing, everything will be perfect and their problems will be over. Far from the case, and why have a clock, it's already on your desktop? And a weather display is useless for non weather related forums. Reminds me of that engineer saying, that 'If something is not broke, it doesn't have enough featurs yet!'

Re having other admins:

I thought this was a bad idea to have more than say 2, but I added 4 more over time, all of which have limited access to the admin CP and I know them personally.
Generally due to the fact that my online access was limited, I added more and that one of the other admins has previous experience too.

I am the only one with full backend access to ftp and the database, so I am safe :)
Plus its nice to know in the config you cannot be deleted.

I totally disagree on the admin numbers thing. I run a forum, of which i'm one of 7 admins.

4 of us have root access to the server to fix problems - one in each timezone (uk,us,aus) and the site owner.

our smods also have limited admin access allowing them to add mods and make changes to the forums that they are responsible for.

It all depends on need. Without this number of admins nothing would get done on the site. Obviously you dont make someone you've just met an admin; most of our admins/smods have been on the site for years and have worked their way up through mod/smod/admin ranks, all new staff members are voted in by admins + smods, so we generally get only the best into staff positions.

The one problem that comes with that is, the person who has server access/owns the hosting or server is generally going to do what they want with the site if they decide to leave or can it.

I had another admin on my site and he literaly was complaining about MY decisions... like if he was the owner!

GOD! If you ever add an admin allways be clear about their place on the administration...

After reading all of the above post, this one stuck out. I'd be interested if you actually did this? This seems like a recipe for disaster especially as your legit members start asking questions of individual fakes. And then keeping the PM mess clear will be a nightmare.

If a forum is interesting it will attract members.

I got very lucky and although I thought the first contact was actually someone trying to sell me some services that I can't afford, I made a phone call and gave someone admin privileges and it has worked exceedingly well. BUT, he owned a vB forum with over 21,000,000 posts, is a programmer, had a real interest in my forum, and gave me a lot of interesting tips that have helped build the forum. I had no idea about administering a forum, banning users, registration problems, etc.

I didn't give ftp access or access to the database and don't plan on doing so. I consider myself lucky as this could have gone south. I now have another moderator and will be adding another in the coming months.

It's quite normal for admins to make about two or three alts... just make sure they vanish into the sunset early on the forum's history. Your mods will probably understand why you made the alts if they ever figure it out.

As for you getting help from this guy, that's a great thing, as the person looks extremely skilled in forum management from the information given.

wow this is still as relevant as it was when i first read it in 2003! classic!

Some fantastic tips there, most of them I already knew, but there were one or two useful things that I have learnt from your Article!

Thanks for Sharing it with us :P!

I've been on one too many web forums where this became a massive issue. Mid-day shut downs for "upgrades" on already established boards. Complete forum reuploads including users tables under new url's.

I would never in my life do that.

Nice advice indeed, I'll take it into consideration.

Boy do I wish I'd read this one before.....

How can I disable the memberlist to guest? :confused:

Great advise ... I believe one should never take the decision of making someone a Admin or even a moderator, in a hurry. Take your time, plan the growth of your website and have a duration in mind when you really need to have another moderator on board to manage things. Make sure you keep in mind that he/she will also need training (the older the board, the more the training) and you should probably select someone who has been an active member on your site for quite sometime. NEVER select a moderator for your site who has been a moderator on other (even similar) site because unless your site is a complete rip-off of that site, it's going to be quite different ... Older members have been comfortable with the way things happen on your community and are OK with it ...

Select the mods and admins very carefully !!

In regards to the multiple admins on one forum.

I run one corporate forum and one non-corporate forum.

For thecorporate forum there are 3 admins. Me, the President, and our Customer service person.

As for the other one. It is an anime forum that has ben around since 2003 when I started off as a super mod. I have since taken over the site since the "owner" has either lost interest. Or has since finished law school and is completely swamped.

I have five admins under me all with complete access to the cp and haven't had any problems whatsoever. Only one besides me has server access.

Great suggestions!

Multi-Admin is really stressful, specially when your doing all the work. I was luck that my other admin went into the army and left.

This is not exactly current anymore...

Hmm...
Netbooks, Phone, mini-pmp tablets...
GSM/EDGE & 3G/HSDPA? Your 21Mbps Mast is only 2Mbps SHARED amongst all the the users for 97% of the cell area. A 50k to 100k experience is not uncommon.
Actual dialup is 20k to 49k, rarely ever more, only ISDN or related tech does true 56k or 64K.

Less than 50% of Irish Internet users have true Broadband. One third of non-copper pair dialup are actually on 3G/Mobile/HSPA, which is absolutely not Broadband, though marketed as it.
http://www.wattystuff.net/issues/mobile-and-nbs/
http://www.techtir.ie/forums/showthr...=2045#post2045
http://www.techtir.ie/forums/showthr...=2073#post2073
http://irelandoffline.org/

Don't have gratuitous graphics. :)

I think this one is out of date mate:D
ETA I did not see the last replies when I quoted this from the front page , guess it was a pretty common observation.

of course we also have the archive and PDA option, although it does not do the user CP or new post in low to no graphics. unless I have missed something.

maybe somebody should update this article a bit

Really good guide/article.

Thanks very much for your share!

just setup my own forum, and while learning loads,. i just came across your post,. thank you for that,. luckily i use common sense and do search alot,. so many of these points are already considered the norm, however,. on that admin regard, hmm, i run no corporate forum, so i do see the point in that, additional admin negated (mostly because of his own behaviour, which was exactly my worry from the get-go)

thank you for your useful tips.