How to manage a forum?

[Jack London]

Hello,

Can you show me ways how to manage a forum and it's different from managing a website or blog?

Pleas share your thoughts ?

 

[PhilipAlcaraz]

Many things can be said for forum managing.Some of the main ideas are quality, culture & appreciation. Always target your audience and manage the forum in proper way. smartly pursue them all told you are doing.

 

[Shirley_Sharp]

It is little different from managing websites, keep trying to focus on your targeted audience this will always help you to manage your forum.

 

[Danlucy]

It's different from manage a blog or a website, forum is a community where more people come and sharing their thoughts hence building a forum and succeed with it, is very difficult taks.

I tried one in the past but failed because I couldn't get enough traffic and members or posts for it. I am building blogs and feeling it's easier.

 

[KatnissEverdeen]

It is different from running a website or blog. You have to be very interactive with your members, lay out rules, add content, keep content directed towards your target audience and their needs. I am currently managing a forum with my fiancée. It is pretty easy so far as well as fun. We are at around 140 members. We hope for it to be a very active, fun forum. I can keep you updated on info on how our forum goes, things that we updated, difficulty of running, and time spent working on it.

 

[MartinW]

Managing forums are a lot harder in my opinion. They are a lot harder to get active than a blog or a website and will often reward you with much less revenue too. They are different from blogs in many ways, SEO is much harder to achieve in my opinion and in this day and age most people are less willing to join forums and contribute content unless already active. I would always try to build a blog or a website and then add a forum if their was demand for it.

Posting is key too, make sure you are active. You cannot be passive with a forum until it is very active or else it will die.

 

[drastic]

You'll have to start a forum and learn from experience.

You'll also have access to the community of the forum software you buy and the people there will teach you some things.

Your question is very generic, beginner, and quite honestly sounds somewhat like you want everyone to spell it out for you from A to Z.

There's simply too much to tell, and if I'm telling everything, then that takes away from the time that I can work on my own sites, thus I'll offer you consulting services for $40 per hour, paid up front via PayPal.

 

[MrGravyCakes]

A forum is a lot more community based, with people chatting to each other being the main aspect. You have a lot to manage with a forum community wise. If someone doesnt like what another person says they can cause arguments so you have to manage them, you have to make sure people have soemthing to talk about, you have to make sure people do not spam...etc. A lot of it is community management.

You alos have to think about the layout of the board, the theme, where you are going to put the content, eg will you put an announcements section in? If so, will it go at the top of the forum or at the bottom? This makes a difference. The them is very important as it is something that can put someone off your forum.

As well as this there is the aspect you have to think about when running a normal site, content. It has to be unique, quality and get people to reply to it. A forum with no posts is useless. In conclusion, a fourm is like a website, but it also has teh added task of the community management aspect.

 

[michaeldlevy]

Forum administration is definitely something you have to experience. Being center in more of a community atmosphere is one of the biggest differences. It is important for building content within the community along with meeting new people. I think if you are into talking to people and love the community environment, then administering a forum is a good skill to learn.

 

[royals]

Managing a forum is a tough task and for sure its not one man job.
You need moderators and content builders in beginning and you must be smart while choosing topics in your forum.
Most things you will learn when you will start a forum of your own and I bet its hard to tackle from spammers who tries to post all those spammy links every minute

 

[ypson]

The hardest part in managing a forum would be moderation, for both spam and rude members.
After that, keeping things active and interesting it's harder than it sounds. Best to have a team upon starting a forum rather than by yourself.

 

[Dewlance]

I think hardest part is getting a traffic in starting. Its really hard to get members and traffic.

I also have a forum, started it and now I post 1x thread each day or at lest 3 to 4 thread with useful content but yet I did not get members more then 1.

 

[softnwords]

softnwords

Just having a forum does not bring traffic.you need to start some promotional campaign to attract visitors.if you offer 1$ per 10 posts on any topics then you will get many visitors for sure. I had this promotion and spend around 100 dolor to promote forums

 

[hmb-robert]

All forums require some form of regular moderation to ensure that users stay active and true to the intended purpose of the forum.

1. Build a moderation team
2. Establish forum rules and encourage quality posts
3. Keep out the spam
4. Stay active and involved in the community
5. Monitor forum traffic

 

[wrcato2]

Learning how to manage forum members and discussions I would start with a facebook group to build your niche forum.
What are your thoughts?

 

[ulterios]

Managing a forum is WAY different than managing a website or blog. A website or blog doesn't need someone to keep an eye on it 24/7/365 if they are setup to handle things like spam prevention properly.

A forum needs a staff to keep up with all the posts and to regulate all the things that need to be taken care of on a forum like making sure that the rules are followed, spam is not posted, the members are not posting illegal or inappropriate content, are following all the other rules of the forum and so on.

A forum requires A LOT MORE WORK and most of that work isn't seen by the general community members and even by some staff members. Forums require a lot of hands-on attention and the bigger they are, the more staff is needed.

There are many differences between a forum and a website or blog but these are some of the biggest ones.

 

[hbacon93]

Thanks guys. I've learned a lot.

@MartinW No it was not that hard unless if you have a proper strategy and planning on how to manage the forum.

In my opinion, forum is so much helpful in a way we could interact with the more experienced people in our field.