Any tips for a beginner forum runner?

[Jimbob]

Hey. I'm using SMF and i was wondering if anyone had any tips to having a great forum that people will love :D.. Also some good ways to get members

you can check out what i have so far by going to

jimbob.x10hosting.com/index
then clicking on forum..

Thanks in advance
-Mike

[Neuromancer]

Best thing is to have a unique idea.

Either by associating yourself with a new software perhaps, or by something completely unrelated to computers.

[Jimbob]

Well.. It's to suppliment my site, which at the moment is based around me trying to be good at flash.. Then i'm planning on doing webtoons. I've already got some content on, but i have one question

Should i get / make a new layout >? or is the smf default fine?

[Neuromancer]

Personally I dont like the default.. .there are PLENTY of themes available though...
Depending on how you created your website and how much css html/xhtml you know you can implement your exsisting theme into SMF

I only have one post on their forum so if you do a search for nueromancer you will find the thread Istarted and in it is a link on how to implement your exsisting site theme into the forum...

[limelight]

Have a direction for your site. I know that I personally have tried to do too much on my site and ended up doing nothing. Have a direction, is your forum going to be resource based, music bases, topic based, pointless. What is your forum about?

[n4tec]

Tips:

No 1: I have a uptodate forum version.. i believe there 1.05 was released sometime back..
No 2: submit to directories like DMOZ, cratory which is my directory , forum_search and others..
No 3: motivate members...

that is all

[chaganlal1]

Well I dont know how you got that template sorry to say man thats a pretty bad one its hideous sorry to say, but the forums dotn look too bad but i dotn liek the frame sorry man.

[Jimbob]

Man, the template is the default.. :P and don't you be touchin my frames >=(

[funindia]

If your forum based on any special interest then you can go to e-groups & search groups related to your interest, join these groups. Now you can send mails to all the group members who have interest on that topic.

Most Used Group Services:

Yahoo! groups http://groups.yahoo.com
MSN groups http://groups.msn.com
Google Groups http://groups.google.com

[Jimbob]

Thanks for all the advice guys! If you have anything else please do share =)