Owning an active forum is a dream of many Webmasters. I know because this topic ranks near the top of my “Frequently Asked Questions” list. However, before you jump into creating one, it’s important you understand a few things about owning a forum.
Forums often look glamorous to people because of the traffic potential, community environment and popularity. However, with those pluses comes some minuses…
Spam Is Inevitable
The more popular your forum gets, the more spammers will target it, so you’re going to have to come up with an action plan to handle spam. Not only do you have to deal with bot (automated) spam, but you have to deal with people who create accounts just to promote their websites.
Of course there are many things you can do to combat spam (screen new member posts, install anti-spam plug-ins, hire moderators, etc.), but just be prepared to deal with it at some level.
This is one of the reasons I highly suggest going with a reputable forum script like vBulletin. They have many anti-spam solutions built right into the software. Plus, there are a variety of free plug-ins available that you can install as well.
Many web hosts provide free forum scripts with your hosting account, and while a lot of them are great, many are not equipped to handle spam as well as vBulletin.
Moderators Are a Must
It took me over a year before I appointed moderators. Part of the reason was I had a bad moderator experience about 8 years ago that left me paranoid. The other reason was I wanted to make sure I appointed people I could trust.
Well it’s been worth the wait because I have a great team helping me. Just understand that the more popular your forum becomes, you will need to appoint moderators to help you out and decide how to compensate them.
You Have to Be Strict & Consistent
One reason my old forum got out of hand was that I was afraid to regulate. I was more concerned with people being upset with my rules and not coming back to post. Well I’ve grown up a lot since then. 🙂 Not everyone is going to like your rules and I’ve learned to be OK with that. It’s much better to preserve the integrity of the forum than to try to please everyone.
It’s an Ongoing Commitment
Even though I have moderators now, I still visit the forum just as much as I did before I had them. Part of that is I’m a workaholic 🙂 , the other part is I am the owner and want to be involved as much as I can. Now that the forum has grown, I cannot respond to all posts like I used to, but I like to participate as much as possible.
Getting it Going Takes Work
I wrote about this in another post so I won’t go into great detail here. You should never launch a forum without an existing traffic base. People aren’t going to post if a forum looks inactive so in order to give yourself a chance, you should launch a forum after you have a sizeable audience to your website or blog.
Of course there are exceptions to every rule, but most successful forums are byproducts of popular websites or blogs.
Any Regrets?
Reading this post may get you the idea that I have regrets about owning a forum. Quite the contrary. It’s been a very rewarding experience. Sure, there have been days when I’m tired, about to climb into bed and thought, “Crap! I gotta check the forum one last time.” 🙂 But for the most part, the positives outweigh the negatives.
I just want you to understand that running a forum is not as glamorous as people believe it is. There’s a lot of work involved so you need to be prepared.
State Your Reasons
I would also suggest that you think about why you want a forum. Is it just to make money or is there another purpose behind it? To be honest, I created Website Babble to help cross-promote my existing websites and provide a way for people to get answers quickly.
I receive so much email on a daily basis so I encourage my visitors to join Website Babble to get help and feedback from other members. Often times they’ll get an answer long before I can get to my email. Plus forums can be a great way for people to learn and share ideas due to the community environment.
As far as monetization, yes, my forum makes some money from banner advertising and I recently enabled third-party text ads. However, making money was never the main goal.
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So if you are thinking about launching a forum in the near future, hopefully this post gave you something to think about. Make sure you understand what you’re getting into and have a clear goal in mind for your future forum.
Good article…I was truly considering having a forum for the purpose of getting my websites some back links and perhaps even for monetization. In fact I was researching it and I came across this article, and now I think I will reconsider.
I truly planned to develop a quick remark to express gratitude to you for these precious suggestions you are showing on this website. My extended internet search for has when they get home of the morning been recognized with useful suggestions to share with my friends.
i just wanna know how much you can make out of ownin’ a forum and how many hours you puttin work?
I’m new here on the forum, found it by searching google. I look forward to chatting about various topics with all of you.
very intresting
Hi Lisa
Thank you for your post. It answered all my concerns and gave me a lot to think about. I am new to Internet Marketing and want to know as much about every venture I may take before I commit. You have made your article so interesting as well as informative.
Keep the information coming!
Thanks
Jordy,
Every time I’ve had a question I just go to the vbulletin forums and get my answer or consult the manual. I’ve never had any problems and most of my questions have been featured related instead of a problem. I would imagine forum support is all they offer as well. I’ve never really checked to see if they have phone support.
I have a couple of Simple Machines forums. I agree they do require an investment of time. I didn’t realize what I was getting into and just launched one without really having any means of directing traffic to it.
I’m kinda burnt out on them just because there hasn’t been any effortless returning visitors. Not any on a consistent basis.
I have been wondering about Vbulletin. Do they have good tech support where you can actually get on the phone with them and they will walk you through the issues?
I get so frustrated with Simple Machines because the only support is in the Forum and I am not an HTML master yet. So, I am totally confused when they respond with short comments about altering the code.
Hi Justin,
Remember that your forum will likely have a ton of different topics and questions that are not on your blog, so it doesn’t necessarily have to compete with your blog’s content if you promote it effectively. At the footer of all your posts, for example, you could have a link that says something like “Have a question about dogs that’s not answered here? Join our forum.” This still leaves it open for comments on your current post but reminds people they can go to your forum for additional questions.
And then once your forum is up and running you can cross-promote the two sites. That’s what I do and it works fine. I have links to my most recent blog posts in my sig file on my forum to keep people coming back to my blog. So a forum and a blog can work very well together and compliment each other.
Lisa,
Thanks for the great commentary. I am 99% sure that I want a forum on my website, but my main concern is how to integrate the forum with blog post comments…will site visitors know when to post comments versus when to visit the forums for a more in-depth discussion?
Hi SB16,
WB is hosted on my own reseller store websitepalace.com (I gave myself a nice discount. LOL)
Thanks for the compliment on the layout.
Hi!
This is a very interesting post as I’ve been recently looking into the idea of integrating a forum into my (future) site. I agree that one must already have a regular, decent-sized amount of traffic for it to take off though.
I was also just wondering do you host WB on a regular shared account with HostGator or somebody else or is it on a dedicated server? Or is it hosted on the same plan as your main website?
Many thanks, (and, by the way, I love the new 2createawebsite layout!)
~~SB16
Hi Lisa
I totally agree with you and there are so many people that beleive that as soon as you setup a forum that members will flood in 🙂
I have tried and failed at a couple of forums and learned this the hard way.
Great Post
Daniel_J
In my opinion after established, forums take on a life of their own and become self sustaining. Certainly you need to take steps to avoid spam with captcha codes and customized sign up forms but overall forums can really do a great job capturing long tail traffic.