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Stop Forum Spam!
I found a website which provides you a list of common forum spammers. You can stop forum spamming by banning their IP’s, emails or usernames.
Visit Stop Forum Spam.
Hope you find this useful.
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Reading Your Way to Success.
Building a Successful Forum.
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Private forums take place on every forum online. They are most common in hiding staff rooms, so administrators and moderators can have exclusive (behind the scene) discussions about the forum, without members peering and leaking out information. This is how it should be.
Some forum owners, hide all their forums from visitors and only allow access to them when a member registers (or has an activated account). The only types of forums which should have their whole forum private are, family forums, personal forums, business forums etc. Why? Because they are not trying to gain public members but rather contact their clients/friends. If you are trying to gain members for your community, and your target is forum growth, your forum should be public.
Here are 3 reasons on how privatising your forum will affect your forum success.
If i can’t see what i’m joining for, why should i bother?
Some people decide to turn their forums on private to maximize registration rates. Example: they will want to register, so that they can see what the community is like. But generally, this stratergy will backfire and result in the total opposite.
Members usually decide to register because they see the content or a discussion which they want to reply to (interact with). So remember, keep your forum opened to the public. Allow them to read your discussions, if they think its worth it, then you have scored a new dedicated member. But if you force visitors to register just to view those discussions, more than likely, they will turn away and never return.
Hiding something from us? I’ll pass.
To some visitors, the reason why forums are set to private is because of illegal activity (trading music, copyrighted programs, softwares etc) or other activities which they don’t want the public to see. Especially those music and movie forums which require registering before gaining access to visit the forums.
This is another reason why setting forums to private may affect your forum growth. It will impact on your registration rate as members don’t wish to take any risk in joining the forum because they ‘assume’ there might be suspicious activity going on behind the scene which in most cases isn’t true. The bottom line is, visitors may have misinterpretations on your forum.
Search Engines can’t Index you!
For any community that is really looking to grow, this is reason enough. Search Engines provide large amounts of traffic for forums. Turn your forum public so it allows search engines to view your content and also index it into their search engine.
Every topic made on your forum is a potential advertiser. If your forum is set to public, each topic is indexed within a search engine. (Eg. Google). For example: If you made a topic about ‘Photo Effect Tutorial(s)’ and someone searched those keywords in Google, they may hit your result and view your forum. Depending on the quality of your content and if they like what they see, you may have scored a new member. Just remember, let those search engine spiders crawl your forum and not close the door on them.
If search engines can’t index your content, you are cutting off a potentially big source of traffic and limiting yourself in a truly unnecessary way.
Just remember, there are many negatives towards turning your forum private. It affects your registration rates significantly, is that what your aiming to do?
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Reading Your Way to Success.
Building a Successful Forum.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!The Well Known, Quality not Quantity! (PART 1)
5 Ways to improve your forum quality.
Maintaining quality content within a forum is difficult for forum administrators because its usually most difficult. As you can see many forums may be based on a unique topic but their off-topic, general chat or
spam areas are most active and hold the majority of the boards total post. This is quantity not quality.
Of course, there are many other quality problems that forum face: members posting useless or immature responses, people who like to write in “IM speak”, spamming, unanswered questions, and many other problems can also affect the quality of a forum.
Within this article, i will provide a number of tips which will assist you in maintaining quality not quantity.
Emphasis on Topical Forums
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.
Control the Spamming/Illegal Advertising
You must control the amount of spam and advertising throughout your forum. Have strict guidelines on where and where you can’t advertise. Many users try to find loopholes in your TOS and rules to advertise. Example: the General Chat forum. Users may take advantage of weak guidelines and create a topic similar to: “Post your forums here” and leave a link to their forum and never return. Remember to be focused.
Encourage Quality Posting
There are many ways to improve the quality of posts from your members. Award members publicly when they post a quality topic. Let your community acknowledge the fact they get awarded for the quality not quantity. Also try to encourage your members not to post with IM language as its difficult for ‘older generation’ members to understand. Such terminology includes: “Lol, Rofl, Brb” etc.
Follow The Leader
As an administrator of a forum, you must set a good example. If you take the time in creating quality posts, your members will find you inspiring and also do the same, its psychological.
Promote Wisely
As stated in some of my previous entries, promote wisely. Only exchange with forums which you would like their members to associate with your forum. Example, if you advertised at a Random Chat Room, yes you would gain main visits but are they worth much? and are those really the type of people you want at your forum?
Well, here is another entry of mine.
Good luck with your forum and always remember, Quality not Quantity.
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Reading Your Way to Success.
Building a Successful Forum.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Don’t Let your Forum Die, Keep your Members Alive!
Keeping your members active, dedicated and interested is quite a challenging task in the long run. Administrators and the staff team will need to hold regular events to keep members interacting with each other and the forum.
Here are some ideas which you can take up to maintain activity within your forum.
I hope these 5 points will help you keep your members alive and active.
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!Tips on Maintaining a Successful Forum
Maintaining a successful forum is difficult, but if you use the correct methods to satisfy your members and motivate them in regular contests, discussions etc. the job will not be as difficult. Here are some tips which i would recommend you put into action to motivate your members and maintaining the forum activity.
I hope this article helps you in maintaining a successful forum. More tips will come soon in “Tips on Maintaining a Successful Forum Part 2″.
Written by
Michael. W
© MESKOS Forum Development Blog 2008
Redistribution of this article will be violating copyright laws.
Please contact me if you would like this doc. submitted to your forum/website.
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