3 Things You Wish You Had Known?
- Thread starter Katrina
- Start date
There are 3 things I still don't know about making and running a forum successfully. Which is why I don't have one. For the reason I don't think I've fully learned from my failures from my last forum. I'm damn well sure that if I start one up I'll be having the same problems I had last time. That being the lack of members, busting my butt on here for post exchanges like the other owners do, and trying to solve inactivity. Then there's trying to get it up there on the search engines where people can find it. Finding the right advertisement service. It's really just too much.
I agree. Unless you're ready to devote more hours than you expect for so little payback then sometimes I wonder what's the point?
Exactly. My forum owning experience was a huge struggle. Getting into it I thought it would be really fun and rewarding. It wasn't what I thought it would be. It was basically just finding new members every day to come join and post new content. Finally I just threw in the towel.
This thread popped up in my 'What's new' list. Maybe it was triggered by subsequently deleted spam?
As I'm here...
1) To some extent I wish I'd done more to monetise my earlier forums because I could have easily lived off the income.
2) I wish I'd had the sense not to upgrade from the best forum product in the world (vBulletin 3) to unfinished, bug ridden garbage (vBulletin 4) without running up a test site first.
3) I also wish I'd gained a better understanding of PHP rather than assume it had a limited life span.
As I'm here...
1) To some extent I wish I'd done more to monetise my earlier forums because I could have easily lived off the income.
2) I wish I'd had the sense not to upgrade from the best forum product in the world (vBulletin 3) to unfinished, bug ridden garbage (vBulletin 4) without running up a test site first.
3) I also wish I'd gained a better understanding of PHP rather than assume it had a limited life span.
Three things I learned the hard way that I wish I knew before I started my forum:
1. That actively sharing your community is more important than it being perfect. You don't need perfect looks to have a great time. Some of my fond memories were spent in forums with the default theme.
2. That it is okay to ask for help, but when someone approaches you out of the blue with help you didn't ask for, you shouldn't be too eager to give them the keys to your kingdom.
3. Make backups as often as possible.
1. That actively sharing your community is more important than it being perfect. You don't need perfect looks to have a great time. Some of my fond memories were spent in forums with the default theme.
2. That it is okay to ask for help, but when someone approaches you out of the blue with help you didn't ask for, you shouldn't be too eager to give them the keys to your kingdom.
3. Make backups as often as possible.
UniqueGrace
Reputable
I don't have my own forum but as I know that forums are a big business, there are things to put in check always;
Continue learning on how to improve
Put more time to share your community and have a plan B in case if plan A didn't work out.
Continue learning on how to improve
Put more time to share your community and have a plan B in case if plan A didn't work out.
Affiliates
