Kick starting a forum

[slaiyer]

So does anybody have advice on how you can make a successful forum?

[Mind-Designers]

Well you can read this article thats about:Tips for a sucessful website.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/22539091/

[lambada]

Find a niche market, with a large audience.
It helps if there aren't that many similar forums / sites on the internet.

Make sure you have something unique - and I don't just mean the theme!

Keep posting yourself, the more you post (they must be of a high quality though) the more likely your forum will get noticed.

Try getting links from similar websites that are already established (even if its only a link in your signature in another forum).

Make sure to take a very active interest in whatever theme your website has.

Keep it small at first maybe a news / updates forum, a forum related to your theme and a general chat forum. The fewer forums, the busier your forum looks.

Try engaging your viewers by starting a debate and getting them posting.

It can take several months before you even get 5 regular members.

Get indexed by google.

Of course, i'm a bit of a hypocrite as my sites are general and don't stay for more than a few weeks - as mine are generally testing new things that I find.

Hope this helps

lambada

[slaiyer]

thanks, rite now i am regreting moving to phpbb3, its just useless, now want to move to yabb or SMF (since i dont want to spend money of vbulletin yet), and there is no converter currently, so have to ride it out.

[bigguy]

There is a converter I think for phpbb3 to SMF. If you look on

http://www.simplemachines.org/download/?converters

[lambada]

Geoff there's only a phpBB2 converter listed there.

You'd be hard pressed to find any converter for phpBB3 seeing as it's not gold yet.

[bigguy]

I think they are working on one on the forums. If not I do believe Brandon did a conversion. the phpbb2 converter might work for phpbb3 you would have to search simplemachines.