MESKOS Forum Development Blog

What makes a Successful Forum?

Lets all get together and have a community discussion on the following topic.

“What makes a Successful forum?”

So another way to put it - What makes a forum successful? The amount content? The quality of it’s Design? General Activity? Or does everything in general affect your judgment?

Please take some time and join in with our discussion. Click HERE to leave your thoughts and views.

Looking forward to hearing your answers.

Members love to Follow the Leader

Have you noticed that your members imitate those who they admire or find inspiration from? Take advantage of this and set a good example, then watch your members follow the leader.

The background of Following the Leader.

When your forum is new, member #1 (usually the forum owner) is the most valuable member. The owner is the one expected to post up new content, solve disputes, welcome new members and actively interact in the forum discussions. New members are not too sure about the atmosphere (the personality) of the forum, so it’s your job to develop it and display to them how it is.

The most influential stage of the Forum.

The most influential stage of the forum is the establishment stage. Your members are clueless about the personality and atmosphere of the forum, so it’s your duty to show it to them. They see you as a leader, they try to become you by inspiring off your online-personality.

Example: It can be as small as this, if your forum signature was laid out nicely. Eg.

/ forumadministrator

Slowly, you will notice members becoming more and more influenced and adding short text signatures like (forummember, forumnamemember etc). We’ve all seen it happen before.

How to take this opportunity for our advantage.

We now know that members unconsciously follow trends and the personality of the forum (and the owner), over a period of time. How can we take this opportunity for our advantage?

Lets say we are developing a forum based around gaming; in this case, we want to create a strong gaming atmosphere. How can we do that? When welcoming new members, you can include small gaming related questions to emphasis the forum concept. Slowly, your members will follow this trend and also do the same.

Every now and then, forum owners ask me “how do i make my members more active?”, “how do i encourage them to post?”, “how do i motivate my members to write more quality posts”. The answer is, lead by example and let them follow. If you want you members to post more, lead by example and make new posts daily, Want your members to write more quality posts? lead by example; dedicate a couple of minutes to finalize your post(s) by fixing any errors, spelling mistakes etc.

Remember, members don’t follow your trends/behavior overnight. Give it time, constantly emphasis the forums personality and trends. Once your members become familiar with the forum, you will notice how they mimic your behavior.

Your Views and Inputs

Have you seen members ‘follow the leader by mimicking your behavior’? or have you joined in with the community and followed different forum trends? Share your points of views and experiences by leaving a comment to this entry.

Tags: building a forum, forum, trends

A Community is like a Beautiful Woman

Your forum community is just like a beautiful women, why? Keep reading.

Keeping her Interested.

To cut a good and long lasting relationship, you need to grab her attention and maintain her interest. This can be done by experimenting. You never know what is best for your community if you never test it out. Try new things, escape your comfort zone, have an open mind because who knows what reward it can bring. Just remember, don’t let your relationship go dull and stale.

Treat her well and you will be rewarded.

Everyone wants to be treated well, especially your women. She wants to be respected, listened to and appreciated. Same as your community, your forum needs an ongoing attention and your members also need to be respected and listened so they feel a sense of value within them selves.

Remember, if you don’t treat your women well, you will obviously see a breakdown in your relationship. Same as your forum, if you don’t treat your forum members and the community well for a period of time, it will come to a devastating conclusion.

Beauty must be seen to be appreciated.

There can be a women with the looks of an angel but if her beauty is not seen, then it’s wasted. Make sure your community looks great and that you have spent enough time advertising and spreading the word of your forum. Make sure your design is original and memorable, so your visitors admire your forum.

Beauty needs a personality.

Yes beauty is a bonus but without a wonderful personality, the relationship may become awkward or uncomfortable. Same as a forum, every community has their own unique personality (their own set of rules, their own ways of creating humor, their own ways of running a forum) - develop it, and it will differentiate your community from the competition and lure in new members. Being beautiful isn’t everything.

You won’t always get along.

Yes, arguments and disagreements are always evadable within a relationship. No matter how beautiful she is, it can not be avoided because everyone is different in their unique ways. This is normal in all relationships, same as an online community.

99% of forum owners find it difficult and slowly give up after not making much progress in recruiting new members and visitors. Don’t give up! It’s normal because all forums have to start from somewhere.

We also may have one or two arguments with members or staff, this is where you need to stop, think again and keep your cool. The continuous arguing will affect the relationship and your community.

Jealously.

Yes, this may have happened to you once in your forum development years. You’ve banned a member and they revenge by creating a similar forum (which usually fails) because their simply trying to annoy you or give you competition. Prepare for jealously, it’s only a small part of your forum history.

Time for your input.

Like always, please leave your thoughts and opinions on this article by leaving a comment.

Sorry but i’m a male and i based the analogy on a a beautiful woman. Hope it’s understandable.

Tags: forums, women

A Fun Flash Game, Taking a break from Forums!

While your waiting for Part 4 of my forum building guide, give this a try. This game may be old but if you haven’t tried it before, give it a try now. This game tests your concentration skills. You must maze your cursor to the other end of the course, without hitting the walls.
So how steady is your hand?

MFBG (Part 3): Idea Integration & Layout Development

Idea Integration and Forum Layout Development.

Finally, we have finalized our forum topic. The next step is to integrate the idea into a structured forum layout, which allows easy navigation for your members.

Defining the Importance of a Forum Layout.

The forum layout of a board is the ordering and positioning of each forum. The structure is highly significant. Remember, the top half of your forum is what your visitors see first, meaning you must be able to appeal to your guests, with your content when they first load the page.

In regards to forum layouts, how can you appeal to your visitors?

90% of forums have administrative topics or general discussions located at the top of their boards. “Announcements, Suggestions” etc. The top half of the forum should contain all your significant (focused) topics, why? because it’s what visitors/members first see. You need to emphasis your forums focus, make it easy for your members to participate in the topical discussions. Example: If your forum is related to gaming, move all your gaming discussion forums to the top and locate your announcements, introductions etc
underneath.

Developing the Layout.

As stated above, avoid falling for the cliched approach. I encourage you to push the more active, topcial forums towards the top (top half of your forum), while moving the announcements and off-topic categories to the bottom. Why? as stated above “make it easy for your members to participate in the topical discussions” .

Lets begin with the general layout of your forum. Considering your forum is newly established, we should not go over 4-5 categories. Why? Visit my “Do not overwhelm your visitors” guide which states why you shouldn’t go over the recommended number of categories.

Example:

Category 1 (Forum Topic Related)
Category 2 (Forum Topic Related)
Category 3 (Off-topic / General Chat)
Category 4 (Announcements & Administration)

Reminder: You can always expand in the future.

Indepth Category Development

Lets say, 3-4 forums in each category is max? If you think your forum needs more, i would suggest you add them as a sub-forum. Here is an extract from my “Do not overwhelm your visitors” guide:

“A good idea is that you create a sub forum if you would like to break it down into a popular sub category. (Gaming -> Counterstrike). This will accumulate all the sub-category and the parent forum posts together and may develop an active forum atmosphere.”

Lets begin with adding forums to the first category (We are still using the Gaming topic for our sampling forum). Remember, our forum revolves around Gaming and our niche (main topical discussions) which is Gaming Hacks. In regards to our previous example, we have 2 categories which is related to our forum topic. Because our Niche is our main focus, we will have Gaming hack discussions in the first category and in the second category, we will cover brief gaming discussions.

Example:

Category 1 (Niche Discussions) - Emphasis.
Category 2 (General Gaming Discussions) - Try not to emphasis this category more than number 1, or you will lose the focus of your forum.

Lets give both categories an unique name but also keeping it simple. Why? If you notice, most users who are interested in Gaming hacks will not be 21 year olds, more likely younger kids, which means their intellectual knowledge isn’t extremely high. And you must adjust your forum to suit their likings, to maintain their interest. (My point is that, you must consider who your main target audience is and that you should customize your board as much to suit their taste).

Example:
Hacking Lab (Category 1)
Gaming Galore (Category 2)

Adding the forums into the Categories:

Lets add 3-4 main forums to the Hacking category and 2-3 main forums to the Gaming Galore.

Hacking Lab

- Gaming Hack Discussions
- Hack Downloads
- Tutorials and Support

Gaming Galore

- General Gaming Chat
- Console Discussions
- PC Gaming

Alright, lets now enhance the above example with some sub-forums.

Hacking Lab

- Gaming Hack Discussions
– Favorite Hacks
– New Releases
- Hack Downloads
– (Categorize the hacks to their dedicated game).
- Tutorials and Support
– (Categorize the tutorials/Guides to their dedicated game).

Gaming Galore

- General Gaming Chat
– Screenshots
- Console Discussions
– (Create a sub-forum for popular Consoles) *
- PC Gaming
– (Create a sub-forum for popular PC games) *

Tips: * Places to find popular PC games and Consoles would be popular Gaming Review sites.

The top 2 categories are complete, now to finish off the off-topic and administration sections. Both shouldn’t be too hard because it’s just a place for general chat.

Lets give Category 3 and 4 a name, some forums and additional sub-forums.

(Insert Site Name Here) Lounge

- The Warm Welcome
- Water Cooler
– Music
– Forum Games
- Media Mall
– Upcoming Movies

(Insert Site Name Here) Administration

- Bulletin Board
- Suggestions & Feedback

Just remember, there are no walls or limitations for the off-topic and administrating categories. So just throw in whatever you have. Just don’t overwhelm them.

Now lets see how the forum layout will look like when put together:

The Final Product:

Hacking Lab

- Gaming Hack Discussions
– Favorite Hacks
– New Releases
- Hack Downloads
– (Categorize the hacks to their dedicated game).
- Tutorials and Support
– (Categorize the tutorials/Guides to their dedicated game).

Gaming Galore

- General Gaming Chat
– Screenshots
- Console Discussions
– (Create a sub-forum for popular Consoles) *
- PC Gaming
– (Create a sub-forum for popular PC games) *

(Insert Site Name Here) Lounge

- The Warm Welcome
- Water Cooler
– Music
– Forum Games
- Media Maul
– Upcoming Movies

(Insert Site Name Here) Administration

- Bulletin Board
- Suggestions & Feedback

See, it’s compact and easy to navigate.

I hope this guide has helped you in developing a complete forum layout. Feel free to leave comments or questions for me.

In my next guide (Part 4), I will be covering Preparations before Launch (Themes, content etc).

Once again, Good Luck! and thank you for reading my forum building gude.

Tags: forum building guide, forum layout, layout development