Building a good forums
 

Hey guys, i'm not much of a forum builder. How do you guy establish a well formed forum?

At the moment, I'm still putting the pieces together for my forum. It's mainly gonna be able gaming, politics, Art, entertainment and a few other ninches, What kind of advice would you guys give to someone like me who would like to have a well established forum?

EDIT: For those who care, Here is my forum. It's still in the works right now. CLICK HERE

Nice skin not sure about the header does not go well with the skin also I would not of put it in a forum folder would look better without that extra forum in the url. Your blog skin is white that needs fixed and am sure cms is the same but can't tell as guests can't see it

I might made it a little unclear of what i mean by making a forums. Sorry about that.

What I'm practically saying is "how do I get alot of members to my forums"? I would use VBSEO, but natually it's no longer around.

What did you do to get all your members on your forums?

You need to reduce the amount of sections you have, or at least group them into sub-forums. Seeing too many sections is overwhelming for guests and discourages them from registering, especially when they can see they are empty/inactive.

Start small, then slowly expand.

I'll take any recommendation

remove the test member and install these
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=268208
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=294633
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=248042
if you need help with the last mod follow this post

Also you should take into account the chances of annoying legitimate users with your anti-spam postures. One of the best ways to KILL a forum is to moderate new members - new members can't do anything but read until a moderator approves their account. If this takes more than a few minutes to get accomplished, people will just leave and never return.

Also, the use of captchas, puzzles and the like annoy people and newer autospam programs have defeated those for the most part anyway. If it doesn't go smoothly on first couple of attempts, folks just give up and leave.


vBulletin4 doesn't need vBSEO, that's why it is no longer around. :) It doesn't need any SEO help, right out of the box.

@force
Test is my other testing account, I need him to validate other memebers problems without invading personal privacy.
And, do i really need 3 spambot removal addons?

@max
I have a question and answer Human verification which is "What does 2+2 equal?" And, 'm sure that any mere child could answer that, and a bot right off the bat, is gonna have a little difficulty with iit.

Believe it or not, that is a very simple question for a bot to answer, you need multiple Q & A But even 1 weak question will completely ruin the effectiveness of Q&A. Update the questions regularly.

It takes years to "build" a community...and it seems there is a website and community for almost anything now on the internet.

I like your sections, well done!

Try to get permission from the admins of a popular forum to post a link to your website, it will definately increase traffic.