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Secret to a successful forum?

hey soroush!

Maybe u should put a link to your forum on your home page =)

And i see you are using the Morpheus X (Grey) Skin found at phpBB styles... i used that skin before too....

It looks kinda hopeless unless you mod the top part to your own. Put your heading ontop so people know it's your forum.
 
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heres a few things.
1. Add uinque modifications, make your site different.
2. Make sure you dont have TOO many forums
3. Make sure your forum is about something with a large audience but not many competitors.
4. Be active yourself, make it your homepage in your browser.
5. Be active on loads of forums, keep it in your signature
6. Tell friends
7. Get more than just yourself involved, get a Co-Admin with loads of influence but someone who can be trusted.
8. Join Affiliate programs.

Hope that Helps
 
I think your forum needs good logo and banner. Regarding forum popularity, I have few tips; I think it may be helpful for you. You should tell some of your friends and relatives, and then it will get popular by word of mouth. Other options are link exchange and create affiliates. Your forum admin and moderator should be active and he/she could also start new good thread. You could start forum contests and put some relevant gifts according to budget and worthiness. :)
 
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as you only have 19 members you should make some dummy accounts and do afew posts from them, the first thing i look at when i join a forum is the stats.
 
you need to promote activity in your forum. if you advertise, you dont want to pay money and realise that people dont really care because the forum is empty. the more threads and posts there are, there is a higher chance of registrations. (i think)
 
tzyzhing said:
submit your site to a lot of search engines
Click to expand...
what's the point of submitting to it?

IMO, most online users prefer to search only on the big 3 engines..

incentives, secret giveaways, contest and promote your forum to targetted audiences...
 
uploadfront said:
even small amount of traffic helps, what i do is make dummy accounts and talk to myself, kind of dumb but it works
Click to expand...
Yeah uploadfront, you are right. I think by creating dummy accounts, you can stimulate conversation and it seems like forum acting that needs much dedication to involve into that dummy character first and then post. However it can be more effective than if all the posts was making by own single identity. As the owner you must also keep contributing to posts, creating new threads with great topics and writing fresh content always. :classic2:
 
I'm the owner of www.swf-forum.com (92 members). Only one member there is to my knowledge fake. 92 members isn't too much to brag about but since the starter of this thread has 22 I'l offer suggestions.
1. PAtiiiennnnnncceeeeeeee..... lots of it
2. link exchange with many forums that discuss simmilar things, make a 'friends' list.
3. mod your forum. No one is interested in a standard forum unless it already is buzzing with users. I used mkportal (portal system that works on most forums like invision, phpbb, etc) and some other mods.
4. Have usefull content that people would want to read, an empty forum is of no interest to anyone- write articles, tutorials , etc
5. (experimental) just a few days ago I've lauched a post4host system thing , which gives users free hosting for a certain number of posts, I'l tell you how that turns out.
 
1)- Offer a incentive for posting that's related to the forum's target. (ex: webmaster forum=free website templates)
2)- Register on your forum as different people and make posts to get the forum started
3)- Post unique content and debatable topics.
4)- And basically what yuriythebest said. That's how I build Outhost.org.
 
The normal HTML pages are easy to get listed... But since forums are dynamic you need a lot of links and traffic to you for getting listed in Search engines..

Use some static URL hacks for your forum. This will make your site more SEO friendly :) You need mod_rewrite for apachae installed and enabled to do so.

You can see it here at my forums :)
http://www.c1dudez.com/forum/index.html
 
Dummy accounts is a nice idea and the another best option is that you should hire some quality forum posters and tell them to create dummy account and post no of interesting threads and reply them because when a new person visit the forum the first thing he wants to know is the traffic and secondly the number of members.
 
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