What should I name my board?

[Enchant]

A common question comes up around here on the discussion boards and GOAYB. "What should I name my board?" or "I don't know what to name my board!".

Most cases, a person will have a name already picked out when signing up for a forum. However, there are the rare occasions when they know what kind of board they want, but haven't a clue what to name it. So this thread is to help tell your experiences in deciding a title and give some suggestions in picking out a name.

Try thinking of something that symbolizes the theme of your forum. For example, if you like Harry Potter, then think of things that make you think Harry Potter. Should be relatively easy, but the trick is to think of something that is catchy, recognizable and yet unique. So I would suggest thinking of one particular theme. So lets say I like the the Dobby scenes. So then I would think of all the words that reminded me of him, such as , elf, house elf, Dobby, house slave, eyes, magical, pillowcase, sock, Malfoy, etc...and then I would try and match them up. The House of Dobby, The Magical Sock, The Eyes of Dobby...you get the idea.

Another thing, I like to do, is be unique. It is hard to come up with a name that hasn't been used before. You normally wouldn't think its hard, but it is. I would suggest looking at a thesaurus and dictionary.A simple task to be sure, but sometimes simplicity is best. This is a good way to find words of the same meaning and put a bit of creativity in your title. So , maybe instead of The House of Dobby, The Magical Sock, The Eyes of Dobby you might try something like, Dobby's Domain, Freedom of a House Elf, An Elf's Vision, etc

These are some tricks I like to use when giving suggestions. What are your techniques, experiences and suggestions?

[mrsyukisohma]

A friend of mine suggest to me that I search on a one of the search engines to find out if the name was already taken.

I've seen someone use their username as an address for a ProBoards name. I encourage you to find a good name for your board and actually use that name for the address, not something that would be like your email address. If it's a personal forum that's yours or something like that, then I can understand why you'd use your username. However, as said above, it should really just fit the subject of the forum. Is it a general forum? If it's a general forum, why use your e-mail that doesn't contain a singers name in it, or nothing to do with the subject?

[D]

A name has to be uniqe, Harry Potter Forums usually have hogwarts somewhere in the title, if that is you I suggest chaning, something unique.

I belive my name (iTech) is unique to my forum, so unique I bought a domain for it as my ProBoards username was very long and hard to remember.


If you have a GFX forum try not to add GFX to the end like ProBoards GFX why not call it something else, once people see your boards they will know what your forum is about.

[n00binator]

having a complicated url is really annoying, say that your forum name was going to be "chat 146" well, chat146.LINK EDITED OUT.com is quite hard to remember, there have been thousands of forums that i have joined, then not been able to remember the urls.

a few good forum urls i found are:
spamthisforum
socal
support (*duh*)
staffsearch
support4ya

and some examples of bad ones are:
wh40ktlotr1243
test212343 (even a test forum)
support101
h47

as for the name, i prefer to make a simple url like "chat4eva" then having the freedom to change the name of the actual forum whenever i like without the url looking strange.

[fatherabbot1900]

I got my forum name by thinking of stuff that I like. I like wrestling so I made a forum around that. I joined my freinds forum and his url was wweonline1.LINK EDITED OUT. I thought what should I name my forum and now I came up with wwetnaonline.LINK EDITED OUT.com =) its simple as that

[∞ ConqueringWolf ∞]

noobinator said:

having a complicated url is really annoying, say that your forum name was going to be "chat 146" well, chat146.LINK EDITED OUT.com is quite hard to remember, there have been thousands of forums that i have joined, then not been able to remember the urls.

a few good forum urls i found are:
spamthisforum
socal
support (*duh*)
staffsearch
support4ya

and some examples of bad ones are:
wh40ktlotr1243
test212343 (even a test forum)
support101
h47

as for the name, i prefer to make a simple url like "chat4eva" then having the freedom to change the name of the actual forum whenever i like without the url looking strange.

fatherabbot1900 said:

I got my forum name by thinking of stuff that I like. I like wrestling so I made a forum around that. I joined my freinds forum and his url was wweonline1.LINK EDITED OUT. I thought what should I name my forum and now I came up with wwetnaonline.LINK EDITED OUT.com =) its simple as that

Please be sure to read and follow the rules please. Links are not allowed to be posted here for any reason.

[Varthus]

Something simple yet elegant truly. I prefer short two - three letter words. The more similar the URL tot he actual forum name the better. For example, if I were to have, "Sapphire Death Designs" It would be a lot better to have a url as sdd.proboards#.com or sddesigns.proboards#.com rather then perhaps saphdeathtosigns10230.proboards#.com

Remember, not all your members bookmark your forum.

[Raven]

When I first made a forum, I thought the box I entered my username in was the box for the username, but it was actually the box for the url address...
Then I saw complete site name and that really confused me because it's not like we have choice...
A few things to remember are:
Make sure you know what to put in the boxes when you first make a forum.
Check out that name in google and yahoo (the two largest search engines).
Because the more forums that use your name, the harder it's going to be for you to be found.
Make sure the name is medium sized.
I say it is not good to have initials as they won't be able to tell what it is exactly, but don't make it over 11 characters long, no one wants to have to type super URL addresses.
Make sure it represents your theme, but have originality in it and try to make it creative.
I hope that helps.

[Drewz]

ravenger said:

When I first made a forum, I thought the box I entered my username in was the box for the username, but it was actually the box for the url address...

Exactly the same for me . Although the name of my forum is totally diffrent to the URL. I called my wrestling forum, Submission Bar, it gives a hint to what the forum is and it sounds cool and catchy.

Thinking of a name came naturally for me, I would suggest others without that creativity just sit down and think for 5 minutes. What would sound good but still give a clue as to what the forum is about.

Calling a Runescape forum, runescape.proboards75.com would be great, but I'm sure that would already be taken. So why not use warrioroverlords.proboards75.com or something. So long as it's related.

[sumsumbubblegum]

It is always good to name the board that reflects your link to the board and something that flows well with the theme. Also, it is good to have a simple name that people that will remember yet unique enough to give your board some character.

[w00tz0rs]

I always perfer a short, to the point, and original name for a forum. For my board, I decided on Shadow Designs. I kept it to two words, made it extremely short, and it showed what the theme of my board was; graphics. I think that three words maximum is a fine name, if it is catchy. Sometimes, an alliteration is helpful as well. As long as it isn't corny and sums up the idea of the message board, it is fine. If I were to make a forum called "Immortal's Graphics Forum but it also has Other Stuff to Post in so Come and Join NOW!" then who would be interested in the name, honestly?

[Elonwe]

It's always a good idea to have keywords in your url, and to have your url and forum name be similar or the same.

Who would remember that the cool graphics forum they registered with had the url latte16354.proboards104.com?

But, if the name of the forum was Pixel Art and the url was paintwithpixels.proboards104.com, it would make more sense.

[Zen]

This was the same problem with me. When I started my forum, I had put my forum name url zennithmyth, therefore it came out as zennithmyth.proboards#.com. I think this is easy for most of my members to remember as it is my own name on the forum but its not same for all espically for newbies. I have instances when members complained that they can't remember my forum's url. You should always have a smiple yet unique name.

And for my forum's name, I have changed it 3 times! (Note: Do not be confused with the name in the link. I am talking about the "name" of the forum) I have never found the perfect and unique one, therefore there has been lots of confusion.

One of my friend did a very simple thing which made people remember his forum url. The name of his forum and the name in the url was same. It was also simple (Hogwarts Wow..isn't that easy to remember?) and unique. I never would have forgotten his forum's url, if there wouldn't have had been the numbers (The xxxx.proboards20.com ones). His forum is easy to find amid a sea of Hogwarts related forums.

I have seen many hard to remember forum urls. You can't expect to remember urls such as Iamcrazy13623.probords#.com etc.

[webmaren]

I found that sometimes it is easier to use randomly generated names for your forum. Here you can feed the generator some seed words and it will give you like 100 ones "mixed" from those. I used it to create a name for my forum. Just be sure to google it first to make sure it isn't already in use.

[Kmylove]

Something simple, easy to remember and right on topic.
On naming my first board I didn't keep this in mind, I tried something original, but it got too original and it's a little hard for people connecting a board named Who Is The One with The Matrix Trilogy...
For the second board I've learned my lesson so I named it right on topic. That seemed to be more effective.