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Being a member of a forum has very little to do with managing a forum...

Let me put a few thoughts together and I will post something later tonight.

Well I will take this conversation to a lil bit different point? What made WSO successful. In my opinion, I love the fact that is has minimal ads! They make their money in other ways that I think are creative. Through Special offers! I love the fact that the moderators are everyone in WSO! Well lets say I am not a fan of police, nor the govt, I dont like people telling me what to do! In WSO everyone is just as everyone else. I think these are a few things that made WSO a success!

Include some sticky posts which make people keep coming back. I find curious ones which give you some hot info work well.


Here are some examples:

How to _______ in 5 easy steps

Discover The Truth About_______

Finally revealed, the solution to_______

Shocking, my disturbing results with_______

Here's how I_______ in the last 24 hours

Stop wasting your time with_______ . Here is the answer...

The fastest way to_______ ("repair your credit", etc.)

Are you really stupid enough to_______


At the end of each one you should include "Is there any more advise you can give to my post"- and you will get others contributing their views.

You can use similar ones like that can arouse curiosity and debate, and get the forum members posting their views, remember people love to give their views.

OK. Back from a nice supper and some time to think. As a qualifier to my suggestions, I am the general manager of QRZ.COM, a niche special interest group (Amateur Radio). Our Alexa worldwide traffic rank is in the low 20K range and domestically we average ~14K.

Starting a forum is always an adventure. You must have a demonstrated need for the product. This is qualified by interest, traffic, and no intense saturation or domination of the market by several big forum players. QRZ is #1 in our niche for a decade now--we are not really worried about startups!

If this is an addition to an existing site, you must have traffic and interesting original content. One can set up a forum only site, but that takes a lot more work unless you are opening on a clear playing field. Choose carefully the forum platform you are going to use--because you need features, good moderation control, and database extensibility as traffic increases. Always select a platform (unless you start with something like vBulletin) that allows you to port--or better forum software has a migration tool for your users and posts. Nothing sucks more than starting a forum on a crappy little platform and then being unable to port their site to a better platform...

If you have traffic and users already, half the startup work is done to begin exchanges. DO NOT lurch in and bombard your members with advertising in the beginning--ramp up across many months a little at a time. DO NOT shill out threads to spectacular eye catching rubbish--that will dampen your ramp-up, and ultimately drive any quality members away.

If you need to begin with something totally new with little or no traffic, hire a consultant who will deliver a package of 100 or 500 new posts from at least 10-20 "new members" to seed the board across a month or so. Make sure that if what your forum is doing has specialized interest, that they can write posts that are not generic. Having such dreck will put the kiss of death on your startup. Don't think that you can play shill and write as 10 or more posters yourself. It's hard to fake two--and over 5 becomes pretty obvious that the content is smoke and mirrors.

Shut trolls and spammers down immediately. As your forum begins to attract others, take careful notice of the more rational and interested folks who add value--as you are going to select your moderation pool from these people. You will need moderators. If you think that you can self moderate a busy site yourself--then you are crazy as hell and do not value your time one bit. Delegate, delegate, delegate.

Links to your forum to generate interest usually are not effective in the first year or so. Promote through social media sites (interacting there as a fellow regular member). Find other similar niche interest forums and join--become a poster--and market gently! A niche mailing list campaign can also be helpful in announcements. Getting quality membership quickly (6-12) months requires effort and expenditure of marketing dollars.

As mentioned, add different sorts of diversity. A PM system is a must. Enable polls, and make new ones up every week. GET RID OF TROUBLEMAKERS QUICKLY!

Now there is a lot more involved--I see an article coming...