I have questions about running a forum before starting one.

[Ken]

I'm looking for professional advice on operating a forum for a healthy, vibrant one. 

I don't have one yet, as if there are things to consider before and during initiating. I don't mind waiting or asking for further questions, and if any come off-putting, may you please tell me?

• What kind of attitude should I have?
  
• What type of forum will work best?
• Is a general-purpose forum a good idea, or is one on a niche a more serviceable alternative?
• Should I work on getting moderators early on, or should I wait until there's enough members?
• What rules should I include and enforce? How should I go about enforcing them?
• What advice can you give on keeping the forum active?
• What can I do to advertise my forum and get it out there?
• What plugins would you recommend?
• If I were to introduce more themes, what should I work on?
• Is it more efficient to have a sole, good default theme?
• If you had words of advice, what would it be?

Thank you for taking the time to read it, and any replies will be greatly appreciated.

[Kami]

This is a great set of questions and I wish more people asked stuff like this before jumping into be a forum admin. I am under the weather today but I definitely have some thoughts I will share ASAP (hopefully tomorrow) when I feel better.

Broadly though: only make a forum that you *want* to make. Don't make something just because you think it will fit whatever you'd consider as successful, make something that you would want to be a leader of a community for. Being a forum creator is often a thankless job, and it's an uphill battle to compete against older forums in the same genre, social media, and online chat communities like discord. If you're chasing only after lightning in a bottle, you'll have no internal motivation to continue trying if the road becomes rough (and it will probably be).

[Ken]

Kami , thank you for replying! Take your time, and get well soon.
I like to operate a general-purpose forum, that's why I'm asking in the third if that's a good idea.

[bigballofyarn]

You might not like my answers, but in my opinion, many of your questions have subjective answers. I may have forgotten 1 or 2, but here's some food for thought anyway. Sorry if some of my answers were brief. We can always discuss things in more detail.

1. Be yourself unless you intend to run an RPG. Then be your character.
2. What type of forum is most attractive to you? I run a general forum because it's most appealing to me and I care about it.
3. General chat forums are simultaneously about everything and nothing. I personally love them. A forum on a specific topic may only attract a specific audience, or no audience if no one can find your forum.
4. Always have more moderators than you think you need. These people are volunteers and won't be available 24/7.
5. The rules you write depend on the the type of forum you create. Familiarize yourself with the ProBoards ToS and Community Guidelines.
6. Be active on your forum. If you aren't interested in your community, you aren't encouraging your members to participate either.
7. You can advertise your forum in the appropriate section of ProBoards Support. support.proboards.com/board/1/advertise-forum
8. I personally only have a light theme and a dark theme. Design choices are up to you and have to reflect the look you want for the forum. You don't need themes for every holiday and feeling unless you want them.
9. Only download plugins if they are features that you want on your forum. I make some of my own. From the ProBoards library, I have the simple tagging plugin. Some of the others I use are discontinued and no longer supported. So, I won't recommend them to you.
10. Forums take time, commitment, and effort. They aren't competitions either. Don't delete your forum if it doesn't take off in some arbitrary amount of time. If you want your forum to succeed, keep putting in the effort.

[Ken]

bigballofyarn , thank you for replying. I have some additional questions relating to your answers:

Aug 16, 2023 8:50:33 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

4. Always have more moderators than you think you need. These people are volunteers and won't be available 24/7.

• So if I believe I need one moderator, I get two to four instead?
  
• How many should I start off with?

Aug 16, 2023 8:50:33 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

5. The rules you write depend on the the type of forum you create. Familiarize yourself with the ProBoards ToS and Community Guidelines.

• Should I look at the most favoured and reputable forums for ideas too?
• How should I go about enforcing them? I don't want to be too strict or lax.

Aug 16, 2023 8:50:33 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

6. Be active on your forum. If you aren't interested in your community, you aren't encouraging your members to participate either.

• What are good suggestions for being active? Should I do things like events?

Aug 16, 2023 8:50:33 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

9. Only download plugins if they are features that you want on your forum. I make some of my own. From the ProBoards library, I have the simple tagging plugin. Some of the others I use are discontinued and no longer supported. So, I won't recommend them to you.

• Are there any plugins that you believe are a must-have or a quality of life for the members?

[Kami]

Ken Okie dokie, I'm not 100% yet but well enough to sit at my desk instead of trying to reply entirely on mobile haha. Here's my more in-depth response:


What kind of attitude should I have?
I've tried a lot of different "vibes" to come across to my members over the years, ranging from super friendly and that ~one of you~ type, to the other extreme of hyper professional. As with most things, moderation was the key to success. Being friendly and amicable, while still maintaining at least a little distance by way of making sure to take different "tones" when having to put on your admin hat and levelsetting behavioural expectations for your members is the key. You're bound to make friends, and you should make friends (or in my case, several friends and also my future husband xD) with your members. You just need to make sure that you're still capable of stepping back and exerting authority when needed. And for clarity, when I say "exerting authority" I still mean in an amicable way, barring extreme circumstances. It's the difference between, "Hey X, I saw that you [broke this rule]. Just a little reminder that this isn't allowed here. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns!" and "X, Unfortunately you have disobeyed rule [number] on this forum. As a consequence these things will happen to you."

What type of forum will work best?
This is not a valuable question to ask, quite frankly. The internet is a wonderful place because there's something for everyone, and "best" is entirely subjective based on your personal goals with running, and being part of, a community. The only real answer to this is: the type of forum that will work the best is whatever forum is run by a person with passion, consistency, and amicability.

Is a general-purpose forum a good idea, or is one on a niche a more serviceable alternative?
Again, trying to figure out the "best" forum is kind of a non-starter. If you want to run a general forum, then run a general forum! There's a success story for every genre of forum there is, so it truly doesn't matter what you decide to make. The more important thing, in my opinion, is to be aware of the challenges you'll face if you decide to create a particular genre of forum. As a for instance, general forums tend to struggle a bit more to stand out from their competitors (other general forums), and at this stage of the lifespan of the internet you'd be competing with a couple of decades worth of stuff. I know here on Support there are advertisements for at least 3 general chat forums that have been running for over 5 years, and that's just off the top of my head. This isn't to discourage you, but to levelset expectations of what you would need to figure out, as an admin. It's a bit easier with niche forums to provide a hook to convince people to join, but on the flip side they have other hurdles they need to face.

Should I work on getting moderators early on, or should I wait until there's enough members?
I would definitely wait. Frontloading moderators on brand new forums tends to be a turn off for potential members; if you walked into a room as, say, a student, and every single person there was a principal, you'd feel kind of awkward, and out of place, no? It's a similar sentiment on forums. One admin, or an admin + their co-admin, is generally sufficient even for a hundred or so members. Once you go beyond about 100, I'd say anywhere from 3-5 staff should work. The only time I've had more than 5 staff is when the forum I co-admin had nearly a thousand members; we had 13 staff at that point, but half of them were dedicated to a single board as we had some niche content at the time that the primary staff team couldn't quite manage.

What rules should I include and enforce? How should I go about enforcing them?
Truth be told, this is entirely subjective to the type of forum you run + the type of community you intend to build. A lot of forums get by with no additional rules and just the ProBoards Terms of Service and Community Guidelines, but other forums like creating additional guidelines based on the main admin's personal preferences and/or based on the genre of forum (eg: RP forums tend to have specific rules on how to make characters and how to behave in-character, as well as general 'community' sort of rules). I think you should figure out the kind of content you want — if you want to do a general chat, what kind of topics are you willing to have members discuss? eg: off the top of my head, if you want politics as a viable discussion point — and base your rules on what you think will be necessary to make sure your community stays happy and healthy.

As far as enforcing rules, my general guideline is to: be consistent, be kind, and take into consideration the context of the scenario. As a forum admin, you will undoubtably face members causing problems. How you deal with them will impact the morale of your community:

• Consistent: The rules apply to all members equally, including (if not especially), any long-term members and/or staff additional to yourself.
  
  
• Kind: You approach members who cause problems with empathy and understanding; they don't need to be berated, they need to be informed that their behaviour needs to change.
  
  
• Context: Not every rule infraction has the same weight. If you have someone spamming a board with contents that break that PB TOS, that's a different degree of severity compared to someone getting into a one-off argument with another member and they should be both be reprimanded (the 'consistent' part) but the consequences should be different to accurately reflect the severity of the issue.

What advice can you give on keeping the forum active?
Ah, the secret sauce question. Unfortunately the answer is just to be consistent with your own activity + if you have additional staff have them be consistent with activity too. You can't rely solely on members to keep things 'active'. You'll also need to observe other forums in your same genre to see the kinds of things that keep discussion / activity flowing. I'm not saying copy them, but rather use it as market data and try to offer your members similar things.

What can I do to advertise my forum and get it out there?
Number one, I'd read this article on search engine optimisation (SEO): Understanding SEO. This should take care of the "google" part of getting your forum out there. Beyond that, the best recommendation I have is to do the following, in order of effectiveness:

• have a lot of money and pay millions to get your URL out there with a full fledged marketing / social media team (hey, one can dream, right?)
  
  
• be an active participant in other, larger forums, with a link to your URL in your signature (here on PB support is a great starting point). this boosts both visibility of your URL to human users and search indexing bots + you as a person so people can get your vibe and see if they would want you as their admin.
  
  
• social media can play a role in things, especially as social media users are starting to look for places to migrate to, where they can have solid community discussions.
  
  
• exchange affiliate buttons with other sites. affiliations are a little different from ads because they tend to be displayed more prominently. this goes for same genre sites (a lot of people will join multiple forums for the same thing) as well as different genre sites (people on specialty genre sites tend to have other interests).
  
  
• post advertisements on forums with an advertising section, following whatever guidelines or stipulations those sites have for posting an ad (this also generally requires your forum to also accept advertisements).

What plugins would you recommend?
None, broadly speaking. Plugins are very dependent on what type of forum you're running and how you want them to be run. The plugins I tend to use are either a) made specifically for me and my goals, or b) specifically oriented towards RP or creative forums.

There are some popular plugins, but you should remember that plugins are written in javascript and can be bypassed by loading the forum with javascript disabled, or on mobile version (which we can't change) so I would advise using only plugins that are not related to any "security". As a for instance, lot of people swear by the Post Quarantine plugin which allows you to review posts prior to them being visible to users, but since it's easily bypassable I don't find it worth the effort. Obviously, your mileage may vary.

If I were to introduce more themes, what should I work on? / Is it more efficient to have a sole, good default theme?
Oh, this so depends on your understanding of web design. Bear in mind my profession was a web and UI/UX designer for many, many years, so my opinion on this is informed by that. In my opinion, all you need is a single theme so long as that theme is aesthetically pleasing + considerate of disabled users (good text size, good colour contrast, not relying solely on colours to convey important information, alt tags and other accommodations for screen readers, etc). However, members may like having multiple themes to choose from, with different colour schemes. I personally do not care to make more than one theme at a time, because I spend a lot of time re-coding basically everything about PB structure. However, other people lean a bit more default and it's easier to offer other options that way. TLDR: do whatever you want, just make sure people can read your content.

If you had words of advice, what would it be?
Don't compare your forum to other forums as a metric of success. Every forum, and every admin, has its own unique draw. I have seen it time and time again over the last 20 years — someone gets excited about a new forum idea they have, they pour in all the time to create the forum and make a theme or two, and throw themselves into promotional work for a couple of months. Then after getting a dozen or so members they abruptly abandon the effort because they think they've failed at making a "good" forum because they have fewer members than another forum in the same genre (which may or may not have opened around the same time). You need to find what works for your goals as an admin, and build your idea of success off that, understanding your path to there will not be the same as another forum's.

--

Phew, that's a lot. Thanks for sticking with it! Let me know if I can expand on anything.

[bigballofyarn]

It's hard to give you an exact number of moderators. I think it would be a good idea though to appoint people who are awake at different times to help guarantee that someone's eyes are always looking after your forum. Don't just appoint random people either and don't give people critical powers over your forum. People make mistakes and other people act in spite. As much as I trust my moderators, none of them can do anything that I can't undo in the event that they make a mistake or click the wrong button. I wouldn't have a pile of staff upfront though if you have no members. That might be a turnoff.

You can definitely look at all different forums for ideas. I wouldn't copy anyone though. The forum still needs to reflect what you want and not be a clone of a forum that already exists.

You are the admin/boss of your forum. Maybe you can think of it like running a company. The rules are the rules. You can have them written in an announcement board or maybe in a stickied thread in every board. You don't have to write out things are are as specific as an installation manual. You enforce them by correcting people through kindness. If someone does something that is against the rules, give them the benefit of the doubt initially, and remind them the rules of the forum. No, you don't want to be a dictator either. As with any relationship online or offline, there should be room for flexibility when someone makes a mistake. For example, you don't have to ban someone for breaking a small rule.

You don't have to hold events. I do member of the month and board of the month on my forum though. You can create topics and respond to members' topics. Be a participating member of the forum. Don't just be the judge and jury. Yes, you are in charge, but this is also your home. You want to interact with the other members of your home, not lock yourself in one room and never talk to the people with whom you share your space, if that makes sense.

I wouldn't worry about adding plugins unless you see something you absolutely need that your forum doesn't have. ProBoards forums work very well out of the box. Plugins only work for people who are viewing your forum in desktop mode or on a desktop device. They won't affect people who are browsing from Tapatalk or a mobile browser.

[Ken]

Thank you, Kami and bigballofyarn . I'll start working on my forum this week. 

Don't worry, I'll advertise the server when I get it setup, and I'll ask questions and for advice when needed. I looked at the Community Guidelines, and I believe that'll be enough. Nothing on top of my head is needed as well than the golden rule of "being awesome."

[bigballofyarn]

*High fives all around* We're a great team on ProBoards!

[Ken]

Kami and bigballofyarn , I made a post on the advertising board. 

I didn't want to leave anyone reading this thread out. You don't have to join or even check it out.

[bigballofyarn]

This isn't really the place to give you opinions on your forum, but I recommend that you add more boards if you want your forum to be attractive to prospective members. You only have one board at the moment.

If you want people to give you opinions about your forum, you should visit the "Get Opinions About Your Forum" board on ProBoards Support. support.proboards.com/board/31/get-opinions-forum

[Ken]

Aug 19, 2023 3:34:53 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

This isn't really the place to give you opinions on your forum, but I recommend that you add more boards if you want your forum to be attractive to prospective members. You only have one board at the moment.

If you want people to give you opinions about your forum, you should visit the "Get Opinions About Your Forum" board on ProBoards Support. support.proboards.com/board/31/get-opinions-forum

I made a thread on the Get Opinions board. I'll consider adding more boards.

[Ken]

I added one to introduce yourself, and one for the daily questions I'm doing.

Is that a good start, bigballofyarn?

[bigballofyarn]

Aug 19, 2023 8:18:12 GMT -8 Ken said:

I added one to introduce yourself, and one for the daily questions I'm doing.

Is that a good start, bigballofyarn ?

Yes, I like that more than keeping everything in one board. Nice work so far. Keep it up.

[Ken]

Aug 19, 2023 8:25:38 GMT -8 bigballofyarn said:

Aug 19, 2023 8:18:12 GMT -8 Ken said:

I added one to introduce yourself, and one for the daily questions I'm doing.

Is that a good start, bigballofyarn ?

Yes, I like that more than keeping everything in one board. Nice work so far. Keep it up.

Thank you! I'll keep the rest on the general board until the forum grows, as that would be overkill.