Forum Administration

Since many of us who run websites also run forums (and there are people who only run forums), I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread where we talk about the fun and pitfalls of having our own Star Wars discussion boards.

(Thanks to DARTH_VADER_AND_C3P0 for the idea, I think it's a good one! )


So, just to get some conversation going...


- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

- How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

 

My answers (here are my forums)...


- I use Aimoo for my boards. They offer free services, but I'm on the pay program, which is about $5 a month. I've been with Aimoo since Coolboard shut down many moons ago, and I think it's a terrific service. I've had very few problems at all the entire time I've been with them. They offer a lot of features and customization. I've been able to get help and advice when I need it. The only drawback I've seen there is that the chat room you get with your board can be a bit tempermental, but even that isn't a huge problem. You get a lot for a reasonable rate, and I'd definitely recommend it to others.


- With the pay program you have a lot of customization options...and I enjoy fooling around with the look of my board. What I would like to do now is to get all of my various little icons to be a standard size and color scheme. I'm getting there, but I'm not all that great at creating icons, so I have to dig all over the web looking for some. I changed some of the smilies (I have a banging-my-head-against-the-wall smilie that I love ), and made some changes to the headers/borders. I'm working on adding HTML customization, but I'm not very good with that at all.

Personally, I think customization helps to make your forums look more...professional? More active (that at least the person running the boards is working to kepp them up)? What do people think?


- My board does a little of both. It's attached to an Anakin-focused site, so it's meant to be an Anakin forum, but there's also a great deal of general SW talk. I think it would be hard to restrict the discussions to one character -- and since that one character is so involved in so many aspects of SW, it also seems a little pointless. Right now, I think we've got a good mix of discussion.


- I've submitted to every search engine I can think of, I always have links in my sigs on other boards...sometimes I invite people that I think would enjoy the boards. I also think word of mouth helps, sometimes my members invite other people, who occasionally sign up and stick around. I always welcome new members (in PM and when they first post), and if someone hasn't been around in a long while, I'll PM them, just to see how they're doing. I don't want to go overboard, but as an admin, I try to keep touch with my members.


- Aside from spoiler rules, I don't have that many rules at all. Most people on my board can handle themselves and there's been almost no trouble. I have a couple of mods, who help with the occasional troll and help keep things run smoothly day to day. It's good to have people around to help, and keep an eye on things when I can't be on the board.


- My board is pretty social. We don't have miscellaneous threads or forums, but we do have a weekly chat, and people talk and PM each other. I encourage people to come to chat, I think a little non-SW talk is good for all of us.

 

- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

I use bb2nuke, which is a port of phpbb for phpnuke. It's a great board as long as you have the space on your server for it. (If your serving from home, it's not an issue at all). It's customizable, easily administrated, and integrates seamlessly into your site. I would most definitely recommend it.

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

I've customized mine a lot, since it's an integrated part of my site. I have gotten icons and smilies from all over the net. Color schemes and such are integrated from the site (if you so choose).

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

My message board, or RPG Board as mine is known, is designed as a place for message board-type RPG. We also have an Out Of Character, or open chat, area.

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

My site is listed on all the major search engines; I am also associated with a few sites.

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

Basic moderation; if it's appropriate for Star Wars (ie it's been in a movie or book), it's appropriate for the board.

- How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

Very social. Everyone who takes the time becomes a part of the fun quickly. We are all good friends, and enjoy joking around with eachother.

SWU RPG Board

 

- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

I use Invisionfree which is free and recently I am co admin at an Invision board which is free to use but you need a pay site to install

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

A lot. On my board. I customized the buttons and the skin. I have gotten many compliments for it. I use the skin on the invisionboard.
On the invisionboard i manage avatars. On both boards there are tons of sw emoticons and i found a way using html codes to make my name colored like here.

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

Clone Wars, Episode 3, The Saga, Books, Aayla Secura Discussion. My boards aren't very active. The invisionboard on the other hand is. We had many problems. Only by deletion did we keep them in line.

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

I made many friends on invisionfree and join many boards. using that and affiliates my members have increased. Not many post often due to their own board but when they do its constructive. The Invisionboard, we sent members out with 5 mini banners to put in their signatures and we advertised often.

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

On my board. Team of people. My rules are pretty lenient.I have two administrators and 3 moderators.
On Invisionboard we have 2 Administrators me and another and 5 moderators

- How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

On both boards there is a misc forum. I use a shoutbox instead of a chat. We use pms and ims often. I encourage socialization.


Now for you guys. Ever had a major problem on the board if so what did you do and what was it?

We had a crisis today on Invisionboard. Two moderators were suspended. I was the only admin on and i acted. I removed the shoutbox they spammed and contacted the members. Upon much investigation. I and the other admin disovered our third admin the head admin had demoted them. We heard their side. But the head admin wasn't on. The other admin owned the board. He demoted our third admin and took over. We have been cleaning everything today. I found out the head had used jc icons without permission and head to remove them. We unbanned our two mods and reinstated the shoutbox. The head admin is fuming and I don't know what will happen. And to top it all off its all over a dumb role playing game. I am so angry right now as is the owner. Well let's here your problems.

 

- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

I use PHPBB which is free. But I do pay for my hosting need at CWI Hosting, which provides me with PHP, several MySQL databases and many other supporting services. The only major drawback is that I don't get or they don't send an email when doing major upgrades (say the Linux kernel or MySQL) which knocks out your page. It might be down just for a little while but it would be nice to find out beforehand. I would definately recommend them.

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

Color scheme I did myself and pln to upgrade it soon. Smilies mostly by googling,, found a bunch of smilies in sites of free clipart and sometimes in the official pages of forums people provide smiley packs. Icons I downloaded mostly free clipart and just edited them myself.

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

Well it concentrates on ILM so yes there is talk of Star Wars. It's mostly open to VFX and movie talk in general. There is more than enough diversity of topics to keep the board busy, I might not connect for days and the board just goes on.

As far as staying in tiopic, if it strays too far, I usually post a message. On the few instances things get out of hand I simply just lock the thread and advise everyone to start a new one if they want to discuss the topic.

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

I don't do anything to attract members. Usually they find the site and many find the forums. Actually some long standing members rarely visit the main oage at all.

To keep them posting, especially in the beginning where there were few and traffic was very low, my philosophy is that the forum admin should be very involved. I constantly post, I try to make sure no post go without reply and ansewer all questions as much as possible (most new members start with questions, so I find providing in depth answers encourages them to keep posting).

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

Moderation is just me. I have rules but they are broad. Basicly stay more or lss on subject, try to curb profanity and vulgarity and try to avoid flammage. By and large the forum nows pretty much smoothly by itself but i always keep my eye on it, even when I don't post for days.

- How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

No misc. forums (I don't like the idea of an anything goes forum), no chat (but maybe in the futuer) but members do talk via PMs and email a bit. I find the boards quite social and it's something that kinda spontaneously happens so no ned for major encouragement. I even met several of the forum members personally, mainly at SIGGRAPH, which is one of the coolest things to happen.

 

Now for you guys. Ever had a major problem on the board if so what did you do and what was it?

I've never had a major problem with my users or anybody who posts. I've banned the occasional drive-by troll. I've had to talk behind-the-scenes to a couple of members who weren't getting along too well, but it was caught before spilling over into anything bigger. Everyone's followed the spoiler policy pretty well.


Actually, the only problem I ever had was with keeping the board up and running after Episode II came out. I was going through my page views like nobody's business and running through my sponsorship program. The same thing happened with my website (it was worse with my website!). I shelled out the cash, but it was a constant thing, to keep monitoring so I could keep ahead of a shut down. Yikes.

I'm wondering if the same thing will happen as we get closer to Ep. III. If it does, I'm toying with the idea of opening a donation box for members to contribute to the sponsorship costs of the boards. I don't particularly care for that idea, and refused to do it last time...but now I don't know. What do you guys think about doing that? Good idea, fair idea or not?

But we'll see. Maybe it won't be a problem this time, and then I'll be complaining how I didn't get the extra hits this time around like I did for AOTC.



To keep them posting, especially in the beginning where there were few and traffic was very low, my philosophy is that the forum admin should be very involved. I constantly post, I try to make sure no post go without reply and ansewer all questions as much as possible (most new members start with questions, so I find providing in depth answers encourages them to keep posting).

I COMPLETELY agree with you on this. I personally think this is something that newer forum owners might not realize right away. When I started my board and had few members, I was determined not to let more than a full day go by with no post, because I think it looks problematic to visitors if absolutely no one has posted in days (or even weeks). So, no matter what, I would find something to say or ask or post somewhere on my forums once a certain time period passed. It might occasionally look like you're talking to yourself , but it helps because it gives the regular members you have something to respond to instead of everyone waiting for someone else to say something. Although I don't need to worry about it very often now, I still keep an eye on this (though my "lag time" is down to a couple of hours instead of a day or two).

I always like to make sure that all threads at least have one response, so that people don't feel ignored. And I make a point to respond to a new users first post, with a welcome message, as well as talking about whatever the topic of their thread/post is.


No misc. forums (I don't like the idea of an anything goes forum)

Me neither, personally. I've never liked it when you go to a forum and the misc forum has twice as many posts as any of the other "on-topic" forums...it dilutes the purpose of the boards to me. I like the chat because it's all off-board and still gives people a chance to talk in a group setting. Beyond that, my members tend to stick to PMs and email.

 

What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

My first message board was and is still hosted at jedigirl.com (I have 3 message boards over there, actually). It's a free service, you just need to send the webmaster an e-mail about layout and such, website url etc. Would I recommend it? No, because since the forum has opened, people rarely visit it and I don't go there often myself to moderate because most of the time, it's not very active.

How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

To be honest, the layout for all three of my forums have not changed that much since they were first opened. Sometimes I worry about that, but other times, I'm like, "Why should I care, no one visits these forums,"

The forum I have for Fated to Be is the only forum that isn't hosted at jedigirl.com and I run that one myself. The service I use for Fated to Be is cgi2you.com ; so I can customize the whole board, according to the layout changes I have for FtB.

Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

All of my message boards are subject focused. The jedigirl.com message forums don't have enough diversity in topics, mainly because no one really pays attention to them. I don't think it would change anything (traffic wise) if I added more conversational topics to those boards.

How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

Hmm, this is something I should worry about. I think the best way to attract people to boards is to advertise them. E-mail your affiliates and tell them there is a new board.

What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

I run my boards by myself. (Well, I really don't moderate the ones I have at jedigirl.com too much) but I do manage them myself. Thus far, I haven't encountered any problems with managing the boards myself. The rules are basically the same as with any other PG-13 rated board.

How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

No such thing exists on my boards. Well, I think jedigirl has some features but I don't use them too much.

~aeryn

 

I think the best way to attract people to boards is to advertise them. E-mail your affiliates and tell them there is a new board.

That's interesting. I don't have affiliates -- the most I do is link exchanges between other website owners. I also own a SiteRing that my own site is a member of, but that's about it. I've done my advertising in other ways...have people found affiliates particularly helpful in attracting visitors and new members to your message boards?

 

I just finished updating my forum's look -- making all the icons match, getting (mostly) matching smilies, changing some icons, updating the logo...adding posting tools (like additional smilies, SW-themed smilies, avatars, and a spell-checker).


It was a pain in the behind. It think it looks great and works great, but it's going to be a while before I try anything major with my boards again.


How often do you guys change the look and customization of your boards? Are you big on adding features that don't automatically come with your forum software?

 

How often do you guys change the look and customization of your boards?

The look only when I want to revamp it. I keep things spartan though I'm trying to make it a bit more attractive now. I just slightly changed my forums look. The reason was because I updated other parts of my site, especially to use XHTML and CSS. So once those other sections were fine I upodated the forums to make everythnig more consistent. I don't plan to change the look in a long time now. I still need to make the forums more CSS and XHTML compliant though, but that's behind the scenes.

Are you big on adding features that don't automatically come with your forum software?

What do you mean by features? You mean even programming? As far as programming and the like, no, that's why I chose a popular one so that others fix bugs and add features. If you mean stuff like emoticons and avatars, then yes. Smilies was more or less simple, and avatars help distibguish your board and spice it up. Plus members like it. Though I must say the amount of work to create avatars is a bit too much for the payoff but it's necessary and fun.

 

What do you mean by features?

I meant pretty much anything that doesn't come automatically with your forums software.


My forums have smilies and avatars, but I've added more (and added SW-specific ones)...it doesn't have a spell-check feature, so I link to a free one and provide instructions on how to use it. I know some people on my forum provider use chat rooms and instant messenger services not provided by the system. Others have added calendars and birthday lists.



Though I must say the amount of work to create avatars is a bit too much for the payoff but it's necessary and fun.

I agree with you there! Luckily, I have a fan art section and artist members to borrow from. I'm no artist myself...it would have take a long time for me to come up with so-so avatars. But the ones my artists have created are pretty cool.

 

My forums

- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

I'm using ezboard. I'm using the free version. I think it's good because it's fast. You can also change the backgrounds without having to know html. The drawbacks are that you lose some features when the gold community runs out. Not much though. I would fully recommend it to anyone.

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

I just use ezboard stuff right now for that. I plan on adding a few things though soon.

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

It's mostly a star wars site. There are also other subjects available about other films, books and DVD's.

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

I think your interest in your board is highly important. You must post on your board to get topics and interest going. No one is going to join, or stay, if they keep coming to vacant forums.

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

I have the usual rules. I'm running the show by myself right now. But once the population grows ( I hope it does. ) I plan on adding a moderator or so. Just so there would be someone besides myself to help if I'm not around. My biggest focus as in rules is just that people respect eachother and don't post spam.

- How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

I would love it. I have several different forums for roleplay, games and conversation. I plan on adding more if I get more ideas from members.

 

I think your interest in your board is highly important. You must post on your board to get topics and interest going. No one is going to join, or stay, if they keep coming to vacant forums.

I certainly agree with that!





New questions -- do most people here have forums that are attached to/part of a website? Does anybody have forums that stand alone? Is there a difference between the two, in terms of attracting and retaining visitors and members? For those of us who have both a forum and a website, which gets the most traffic? How can you direct traffic from one to the other?

 

Well my forums are part of the website. I think there would be a bit of a difference between having the combo and standalone though. With a combo, I have 2 ways of attracting visitors, one with content on the main site, and the other with the forums themselves. It's actually funny though since my visitors are somewhat split. Some mainly check the forums and seldom the main site but others just mainly check the main site but don't participate in the forums or barely give it a glance. one consequence though is that it's a lot more work since I have to keeop the main site constantly updated besides moderating and participating on the forums. Sometimes it's a bit too much and I imagine it would be for other people.

While there might be a difference in attracting and retaining visitors, they complement each other. I'm sure some are attarcted because of the content and news on the main page, while others are retained by wanting to participate in the forums. So it works great, it serves different tastes.

As far as directing traffic I only have the forums as a link in the navigation menu and bar. No other advertising but seems to work well enough.

As far as traffic I rarely check the places visited, I'm more interested from where people connect and how they find my site. From quickly checking the logs, seems the traffic is almost evenly split between the 2, though with a bit more towards the main site. I guess it's understandable since the content is constantly updated and of more general interest, as opposed the forums which require registration to post and sometimes the discussion range from a bit of fluff to obscure trivia. It's also a bit difficult to measure since I got a couple of main site subsections as separate parts, which gets a lot less traffic but skews a bit the results.

 

i've got two forums - one that died cause nobody used it except me and a close friend, and the one attatched to my site. the one to my site is pretty active, but the members are mostly people I know, met at cons, or talked to before online. kindof a bummer but yeah. I don't know that many people join a forum attatched to a personal site... i don't think i would, but then i've never found one... *shruG*

 

My forums are part of my website. My website gets much more traffic than my forums (at least as far as I can tell from the stats on both), but I think the great majority of my forum's members are people who stumbled across or heard about the website first.

I think finding the website is just easier -- anyone who puts "Anakin Skywalker" or "Star Wars fan fic" or something else rather general into a search engine has a decent shot of my site coming up in the results. My forums are not as easy to Google (or find in any other search engine), mostly because it seems that my actual threads aren't used by the search engines. So, if you don't search for specific phrases on my forums main page, it's less likely my boards will come up.

Also, I think people will repeat visit a website much more often. Part of what we're talking about here is how to attract visitors to forums, how to get them to come back, how to get lurkers to sign up and post, etc., etc. With the website, they can just come, read the fics, check out the art, answer the polls -- all without signing up and revealing themselves if they don't want to. So, there are more visitors and more regulars, even if you don't always know who they are. I also have members who probably just stick to the boards, and come there to talk without checking the site very often.

As far as directing traffic, I try to direct it both ways. Every page on my website has a navigation bar at the bottom with links to the different sections, and the discussion board is one of the links. Every section (and in some cases the individual fan works) has links to places on the discussion boards where you can discuss the fics and art and so forth. The Boards have a nav bar at the bottom of every page as well, linking to the other sections at the site. The board icon at the top of the screen links to the front page of the site. I have a Works of the Week feature at the boards, which highlights different fics, art pieces, and essays. And I have a thread which announces every site update.


it's a lot more work since I have to keeop the main site constantly updated besides moderating and participating on the forums. Sometimes it's a bit too much and I imagine it would be for other people.

Yeah, sometimes I wind up not paying as much attention to one or the other, and I have to work to make sure I'm doing what needs to be done with both. Especially with updating my site. I get caught up in the day to day with my boards, and suddenly realize that too much time has passed since I properly updated the site. It can be a lot to do.


the one to my site is pretty active, but the members are mostly people I know, met at cons, or talked to before online.

That's interesting! I've met a couple of my members, but we were all friends online first.

 

I have a bunch of boards personally, but the main Fan Force ones are at
http://www.ocstarwars.com/phpBB
And my Boba Fett one:
http://www.ocstarwars.com/phpBB

- What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

I use php obviously. It's free, and very very well done. I've used it for just about 5 years now on various sites. It's been very reliable and never had problems (aside from user error!). It's upgradable, and the mods for it are easy to find and amazing. I don't have ANY drawbacks for it! I HIGHLY reccomend it. I'm an advanced PHPBB coder however, so it seems easy to me. but to make the boards highly customized, it takes a lot of template work and understanding of PHP.

- How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

I have lots of different themes for the boards, and I often change the php codes to suit my needs. The Orange County Star Wars Society Boards have about 7 different 'themes' that change the colors, meus, graphics, and everything. I went for the custom board look with a custom menu on top of each page.
Here's a screencap of them all:
Bounty Hunter
Creatures
Droideka
Imperial
Jedi
OCSWS
Sith
Women of Star Wars

- Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?
Well, the Fan Forces board is split into different sections, each with their own forums. From Costuming, Off Topic, Star Wars, OCSWS events... we had a lot of various topics. And it does keep people interested. Same goes for the other sites with phpBB I've done. Anyone can go off topic, but you can tell them to stay on it, or even split a thread in two parts right at the point of going off topic.

- How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?
Well, I promote the boards like crazy on the websites. get enough advertisement for it, and eventually they will come and check it out. Also word of mouth works well, I seem to have made these themes 'awesome' enough that people are spreading them around. The ONLY want to keep them posting is to be active. The more active a board is, the more people will post. I've held contests before on the boards, it helps get people posting.

- What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?
I run my BFMP site with two mods that volunteered. Usually I have my friends who are interested and I know I can trust. For the BFMP I am rather strict on a family oriented boards. Only because there's a lot of youngins on there, and who knows when a parent might be looking over their should. I want those boards to be open to anyone... so I've had to be strict on what's good and bad. there are clear but rules defined in a global announcement post (means that it's a post that shows up on top of all forums on the board).
On the OCSWS boards, it's pretty much okay to post most things. Our members have a pretty good idea of t

 

What message board service do you use? Is it free or pay? What's good about it? What are the drawbacks? Would you recommend it?

A lot has changed since I posted in this thread. I still have forums at jedigirl but now I use chatarea.com and may soon move to invision board. chat area.com is good host because you can customize all the forums (like making all them the same default color instead of going throug all of them). But there's still a lot of ads. Would I recommend their service? I would recommend their services for beginner web designers that don't have the time to customize their boards and want something quick.

How much have you customized your board? Where do you find icons, smilies, color schemes, HTML codes, etc. to help distinguish your board from others provided with the same message board service?

I think smilies and html codes are allowed on chatarea.com but I haven't used them much. I tried to add some images but they only ended up as broken links.

Does your message board focus on a particular subject, or is it general Star Wars talk? If you have a specific subject, how do you stay on topic? Is there enough diversity in your topic to keep a board busy?

There at least seven sub forums so it gets pretty busy but they aren't really organized into categories.

How do you attract members? How do you keep them posting once they've joined? What works and doesn't work?

When I first launched the new board, it was very active and now I share the board with The Sobiwan Network so I think more people lurk around the board more.

What do you do about rules and moderation? Do you have a team of people, or are you running the show by yourself? Do you have a ton of rules or does your forum pretty much run smoothly by itself?

I have pretty much the same rules that are on these boards. No flaming each other, be nice to other people and no NC-17 or R rated content or foul language. I still run the board myself and visit when I can to check up on the current topics and add my two cents.

How social is your board? Do you have a miscellaneous forum, do you have chats, do your members talk to each other on IM, PM or email? Do you encourage socialization among your posters?

I keep the people that visit the board informed about updates on the main site, so they know there's always new material and such. There is a general talk and questions and comments area, but no one really goes in there.

~aeryn

 

BobaFett-MP, it looks like you do a lot of work on your site's themes, that's pretty cool. I wish I were better at all this stuff -- I never want to change the look/theme again, because it took me so long the last time I did it (I really like my look now of course, and working on my forums is fun...but if I want to do major changes, it takes me forever to get what I want together).


Also word of mouth works well, I seem to have made these themes 'awesome' enough that people are spreading them around.

Word of mouth definitely helps, especially with retaining visitors as members. Anyone might swing by to check out your boards, but I find that people sent specifically to your site by a friend are more likely to sign up and stay.



I would recommend their services for beginner web designers that don't have the time to customize their boards and want something quick.

AERYN_SUN, I looked at chatarea.com recently and felt the same way. I've used Invision Board and liked it, though not as much as Aimoo (which I love to pieces).

 

I've gotten into arguments with those that run Aimoo. Whenever I try to start a new board on my account, the board never works!!

Anyways, I use Proboards, which is free. It's great because it gives you so many options, and it's easy to use. I did have one problem with it: I was using another form of surfing the web(Netscape) and I tried to edit it and it deleted all of my catagories and posts, but I never had a problem since. I would highly recommend using Proboards.

I have customized my board a bunch. I find icons wherever, sometimes I put my own icons into the library. I find smilies here. My color scheme has sort of a spacey feel, it goes good with the rest of my site. I also have my banner at the top of each page.

My boards (when posters post) generally talk about anything Star Wars, but it is organized into neat catagories. There was a bunch of posts before, but as I have said, the posts were deleted. Main subjects are (or were) usually NJO related, and there were a lot of game topics. There is enough diversity in subjects at the Jedi Wars boards that you shouldn't be bored at all.

How do I attract members? Well, I'm working on that. Mostly from people I know from school or in my area. How do I keep them posting? Well, I post all the time, but most of the members there have other things to do in life than to post at my boards. I'll keep you "posted" if anyone makes an impact.

Rules and moderation-wise: When you register you see the synopsis, but I have a few other rules there too. No excessive cussing, no bad pics, the usual. Personal Pic size is a biggie too: I try to tell others not to put really huge pics for their avatars on the site so the pages load better. So far, I'm running the show by myself. Hopefully that will change. The forum runs smooth by itself.

- My board is very social. As I have said before, it's for fans. You can be as open as you want. I have a miscell. catagory for those that want to get off topic into more fun stuff. Chats, well, I am working on putting up the Jedi Wars chat room, but there isn't enough people to visit my site that I would want to do that right now. I encourage socialization among the posters, because I think there is a need for people to make friends that have the same subjects in mind when posting. Hopefully that made some sense, but morale is something that I focus a lot on. I send out e-mails every once in a while to check up on how members are doing.

Well, that's my rant.

 

I've gotten into arguments with those that run Aimoo. Whenever I try to start a new board on my account, the board never works!!

That's strange, Jedi_Commander_Faofa...Aimoo's had some issues, but I haven't heard about that particular problem with starting new boards. Did you ever get it resolved?


Personal Pic size is a biggie too: I try to tell others not to put really huge pics for their avatars on the site so the pages load better.

Yeah, those can really get out of hand...Aimoo finally gave admins the ability to limit the width of the avatars, so they at least don't throw off the alignment of the threads. I suppose people could do excessivley long ones, but that doesn't seem to be an issue so far.


I just made some changes to my forums the last few days...I had two main forums before, one for SW talk, and one specifically for feedback on the works at my website. I've split those forums up into 8 or 9 forums, to make the forums more organize, and hopefully focus discussions better. We'll what difference it makes.

 

No, I never got it resolved. When I made the board, it wouldn't allow anyone to post, including me. It really sucked.

I deleted some catagories off my board at Jedi Wars because I am trying to narrow the topics down.

 

That's too bad that never got straightened out for you...


You and I seem to be going in opposite directions for forum organization -- I added more boards, you got rid of some. Hopefully, each approach will work for our particular forums.

 

Well, my forum split seems to be working well, things feel much more organized, and the conversations more focused.

I tend to think that a lot of forums suffer because they have tons of categories before they really get off the ground -- so you get 10-15 boards with only a small handful of posts each, which makes it look empty...but now that I've tried it, a split can be a good thing if you already have good conversations going.