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| Steps to building a complete and successful forum. Written by Ben Woodruff Alright, you have done all of the installing and bought the hosting and the domain name. You are ready to open up your forum to the public, but are you ready to handle and keep the upcoming visitors? Follow these tips to successfully build a forum. 1. Use a very unique good design. What is a good design? One that no one else has and looks good. Use 2-3 colors, and use gradients. 2. Have a good, unique theme. Don't have a general forum, or a gaming forum. If you are going to have a gaming forum, have it be for a specific game or system. 3. Have some cool JavaScript effects to draw in some curious users, but not so many it takes 5 minutes to load a page. 4. Have a really cool mini banner (88x31), and post it everywhere you can. Enter a site exchange. 5. Don't have a lot of admins and mods. It is a total turn off to have 8 admins, and only 9 members. 6. Don't have to few, or to many boards. 20 boards, but only 1 with posts is also a turn off. Also one board with a ton of posts is a turn off. 7. Customize your buttons. No one likes the original buttons for any type of forum. 8. Have a site to go with your forum. 9. Don't steal other people's skins/codes/colors/images/ideas. If someone finds out that you copied it, you look really stupid. 10. Don't have a lot of huge graphics. 56k users won't be able to see them, and will not sign up. Follow these tips and your forum should be up and prospering in no time at all. |