Forum owners: What is your best piece of advice?

**Mike Dammann** · 30 December, 2012, 18:31 PM

I have started a new niche forum and would like to know from those of you who run forums successfully:

What is your ONE best piece of advice to anyone who wants to start strong and build a good community that lasts?

~ Mike

**Gavo** · 30 December, 2012, 22:36 PM

I have a 9 year old forum, the main things are to keep the site running fast and keep at it.

And be prepared to to pay for hosting, my forum is upto a 16Core CPU(4x4) ded server with 32GB ram + 2xSSD drives.

**Sami4u** · 31 December, 2012, 01:42 AM

Hi,

My forum was not successful, so I really have no good advice

This is what I found out be prepared to talk to yourself a lot. If you can be Sybil with a split personality disorder you might have a chance LOL

Don't rely on friends. Friends that say they will post for they might be meaningful but some how they fall short.

Don't hire anyone like forum posters because unless you are willing to pay for them to post comments for months at a time because they make a few posts and then gone. All you will have is some stupid posts for a few members that never come back.

Don't run a contest for the most post. Then you get get 100's of worthless posts and when the contest is over most of your posters are gone.

All I can say is give quality as best you can in your posts.

Be per paired for a bunch of turnover in members things happen in peoples lives and member ship comes and goes.\

Wishing you all the best with your new forum.

Sami

P.S. What is niche forum on?

**Mike Dammann** · 31 December, 2012, 06:00 AM

Thanks. The forum is for people whose blood type is rh negative with everything that comes with it. Rh disease etc.

**robjones** · 31 December, 2012, 16:26 PM

If I knew the answer to that you'd already have a lot more responses to this thread. I'll watch, maybe I'll learn.

FTR, we have had a boatload of apps to this forum recently, most of which were turned down because they came from places that provide lots of posts and no value. Frankly I don't need the company bad enough to let the Ugg Boots and Nike types from China in, the guys from Vietnam trying to sell US passwords and financial data, or even the Maharashthra / New Delhi idiot thread and puppet show creators. Those guys are all invited to kiss my ass. [I mean that in the nicest way possible of course.] I'll quit stereotyping when they quit living up to stereotypes.

Slow growth is a pain, but it's better than unbridled spam. There's probably a middle ground I'm missing, but as we have slowly made most of the spammers go back and re-use their old IDs (and removed them)... maybe we'll open the tap a little wider and test the new traffic a bit more. Not happening yet though... have locked out the vast majority of new apps cause they seem to originate from a rather finite set of keyboards in places that breed spammers like Iowa grows potatoes.

**iowadawg** · 31 December, 2012, 17:56 PM

Some would say this:
Do not allow IowaDawg in as a member!

**robjones** · 31 December, 2012, 18:43 PM

Will obviously ignored that sound advice and I'm just too big a coward to correct his error.

**Mike Dammann** · 1 January, 2013, 15:09 PM

One thing I am going to do is install the share button. Facebook and Twitter.

I feel you with the "type of people" issue. A lot of people on Facebook are goofs and it will increase the workload. But it's also very beneficial I think.

Twitter on the other hand seems to have better quality. Or it is the fact that I can easily ignore their tweets and they give up.

Originally Posted by robjones

If I knew the answer to that you'd already have a lot more responses to this thread. I'll watch, maybe I'll learn.

FTR, we have had a boatload of apps to this forum recently, most of which were turned down because they came from places that provide lots of posts and no value. Frankly I don't need the company bad enough to let the Ugg Boots and Nike types from China in, the guys from Vietnam trying to sell US passwords and financial data, or even the Maharashthra / New Delhi idiot thread and puppet show creators. Those guys are all invited to kiss my ass. [I mean that in the nicest way possible of course.] I'll quit stereotyping when they quit living up to stereotypes.

Slow growth is a pain, but it's better than unbridled spam. There's probably a middle ground I'm missing, but as we have slowly made most of the spammers go back and re-use their old IDs (and removed them)... maybe we'll open the tap a little wider and test the new traffic a bit more. Not happening yet though... have locked out the vast majority of new apps cause they seem to originate from a rather finite set of keyboards in places that breed spammers like Iowa grows potatoes.