[Jason]

When making a board, you have to take big steps in maintain it and make it successful, but every successful forum needs to take small steps to meet the large goals that lie ahead. This article should be able to assist you in setting up your forums before you put it out there for many potential members to see. |This article is for developing forums for InvisionFree.|

Community Aim & Forum Alterations

Taking steps to make a successful board isn't as easy as just register the board under the first thing that pops up off the top of your head. Put some real thought into what you are good at, and try making a board that fits that subject. Remember: not all boards that are focused around a single subject would end up being successful, but if you do, make sure to add as much content toward that subject as possible in order to maintain adequate and active topics that meets the member's expectations of the board. Afterwards, take necessary measures to secure your account, since you are the Root Admin of the board, making sure your account is secure is top priority, try using an alphanumeric password (letters, numbers, symbols, and special symbols and make sure it isn't any specific pattern or order [Example: 3†r/n2˪-ä+k8|], and do not make the password anything that is easily crackable, like a word from the dictionary or someone's name, don't even use your birthdate.) Now to get down to business, start off with the basics: Announcements Forum, Help & Feedback Forum, and a Welcome/Departure Forum; then focus on making the forums that would best fit the subject your community would be based around, and don't forget any General Chat Forums, such as for Gaming, Anime, or any other forums that would appeal to future members.

A Stepping Stone To Greatness: Forum Outlook

Now as all forum designers would know, make sure to have a good skin that would catch the eye of the guests. Try not to add one that would blind a member, because it might just make them not want to join; who would want to join a board that has a skin that hurts their eyes, I wouldn't. Also, try using a skin that is professional and one that other forum owners haven't used because you would want to seperate yourself from the others and still attract potentials to the community. Also, adding a few mods to the board usually helps make it seem a little more professional or more appealing and useful to members and guests. And then there are some options in the Admin Control Panel that would suit members. Try experimenting with the options until you get something that would be most suitable for your members. Note: At the end of this article are links to locate good IF skins, hacks, and mods, and a list of mods that would be most useful.

Advertisement Is Key

So you don't have any money and you are trying to get hits and traffic coming to your board? Not a problem, you could always try some free web submission pages located around the Internet. One thing that would help with search engine crawlers when submitting your url to a search engine is to add Meta Tags to the board via ACP because it helps the crawlers understand what your board is based around and caches your board with the keywords you place and the discription you gave of your board. Another free way to start getting traffic is to submit your board to topsites that allow forums to be submitted; doing so would help get your board out there and by submitting them to certain catagories of the topsite makes it easier to get noticed if the topsites is based around the same subject as your board. When doing so, after submitting, you should recieve a Topsite Button, make sure to get a topsite bar or affiliation bar placed on your board so that it can help keep up with unique hits that comes in and out. Also, note that if any of the links to the topsites are broken (either or the image link), remove it because if you do so should help keep the board looking professional. Another way is by affiliation, by affiliating with another board or a website would help both improve their traffic and boost overall member gain, trying to affiliate with board/websites that have similar subjects as yours would help both overall. And lastly, go to other boards with similar subjects, register and place a link to your board in your signature (if allowed) and be active and maybe by doing so will bring some members coming to your board in the long run. Note: Also at the end of this article is a list of a few search engine submission links to help you in getting on search engines. Also is what a Meta Tag is and where it should go.

Final Preparations

One last thing to mention, before really getting the board out there, get some friends together and start making topics to help get everything situated for when new members join so that they will have something to post to. Now after it is all said and done, you should be on your way to completing your future goals with your community and drive to make it a successful board.

Closure

Last bit of information for anyone who is reading this article, try sorting everything out and getting everything prepared first before opening your community to the public, because you don't wanna take away the time you have to post by working in the ACP all day. All there is to say is to be active at your own board, don't weigh yourself down with work or you won't enjoy what you created. With that said, thank you for taking your time to read this article. I hope it has been helpful.


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[Michael]

Excellent Article, moving to Forum Articles.

[Jason]

Thanks for saying so Mike, and sorry for putting the topic in the wrong place, you told me where to put it but I didn't quite understood where you said exactly. But glad it was praised for being a good article. Expecially since this was my first one.

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