Tips for Forum Administrators

By: Manu Tripathi
Submitted: 2007-01-17 13:20:48
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Introduction
In recent years forums has emerged as a great tool for sharing resources, ideas and views worldwide. Even, search engines are now giving more value to forum posts. One can create a forum and can enjoy high traffic on there site. Creating a forum needs nothing but any of the free forum software installed on your webserver. I will give some basic terminological details –

General Description and terms used This topic can only be better understood if you have knowledge for few basic terms. If you are aware of following terms just skip it for the next heading.

Admin – Admin is organizer of the forum. He can add or delete any user, can ban any IP address, manage all forums and boards on the forum and do all house keeping activities.

Topic – Topic appear as menu on any board. Usually, every topic is replied. The topic and replies together make any discussion.

User – Simple visitors of the forum. They have a User ID and a password. They can also add image called ‘avatar’ and a signature.

Posts – Any topic or reply is called a post.

Profiles – Every user has a profile, it contains – user id, date joined number of posts, date of birth, signature and other details (Email id, AIM, YIM etc.).

Banning and warning users – If any user goes beyond the rules of the forum, he/she should be banned or warned. Warning means a tag is added to the name of member, while banning means that member cant login and even cant create a new login from his/her IP address.

Pruning – Some boards are set as auto pruning, this means all dead and useless topics are deleted automatically after some time.

Bulk mail – An admin can send mail to all the users. This is called bulk mailing.

Forum skin – The overall look and feel of the forum is governed by forum skin. Admin can add new skins to any forum. Some forums offer their users ability to select any skin from a list. There is at least one skin called default.

Some valuable tips

1. Choosing topics When creating the forum, be careful. In my opinion try to stick on one domain, instead of, putting all-in-one forum. For example if you are taking jokes as the base of your forum don’t mix cooking in it. Better you open two separate forums for that. Periodically consider to open new boards.
2. Censorship and pruning Censorship not only helps your board to be clean and trouble free but also keeps members visiting. If your forum allows using inappropriate words, you will soon see that many members have left your forum. Make sure that your forum is viewed at – home, office, schools and other public places, keeping it clean will always attract more traffic. Pruning is regular deletion of dead posts. Don’t use auto pruning for useful boards as they may be viewed even if there is no new replies, but it is always good to set auto pruning of chat based and test area boards.
3. Adding Moderators Adding global moderators is one of the best loads sharing exercise for any webmaster. Moderators are normal user with some extra capabilities like – editing any post, warning any user, changing and setting user profile.
4. They never click on ad It is usually seen that member never click on ad. This is a problem for administrator to generate money by using Ad-sense type of ad. One thing can be done – put ad on your forum on the basis of number of prints instead of number of clicks. Try to join some member exchange drive of few companies like – ebay, my space etc. where you can earn good money by making your members joining these community.
5. Once a trouble maker , always a trouble maker If you think that a member is not following the rules of your forum take quick action. The proper way of action is usually – first warning him/her and then one can consider banning him. A rule of thumb is – Once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker. So make take quick action against such members. Even you are losing one member you can make sure other will not leave due to that troublemaker.
6. Increasing Traffic Usually all search engines give a higher rank for any forum post. Like if you are searching for any topic and there is a forum post regarding that topic, you will see that search engine will place forum topic first in its search. With this in mind one can say that, more the topics posted more the traffic it will attract. One can also opt for advertisement drive; this will help in establishing the forum. Once we got a good number of members just stops advertisements.
Conclusion
Forum administration is an integral part of forum health. A good forum is one which achieves its goal and members found it useful. I am not in favor of strictly administrating everything, but I am in favor of friendly administrating it.

Manu Dutt Tripathi is a DBA working in Bangalore India. He is also webadmin of some forums. He likes sharing his views with other people. Take a look on his wiki - http://manudutt.wikispaces.com

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