Besides paid VIP member groups, do you offer any free exclusive groups on your forum? Maybe something like "valued member", or like here at FP "valued contributor"? One forum I was on many years ago called their group "House of Lords". They didn't have any special powers, they just had a different colored username, a special usergroup icon, and their own private and public board that only they could post in.
These groups can be great ways to honor members who are active, follow the rules, help out with the forum, etc., but I have noticed that many forums don't really seem to use them all at often anymore. They seemed to be more popular a few years back, but now I wonder if some may not use them to try and get people to purchase VIP memberships.
My old webmaster "Web Guru" had two usergroups called "Graphic Guru" and "Article Guru". Both groups were given to those who contributed a lot in their respected categories.
I don't have that option on my website at all, Other then paid VIP group. But being said that I had one guy been an staff for months and he had to leave for private reasons and so I gave him the full VIP rank for free for life 🙂
That gave him extra full powers and addons that other members did not have
I always just have the one group for paid and unpaid contributors. Just because they paid doesn't make them any special they made a donation to the forum. If they do a decent donation I will give them a separate donation rank but no extra groups.
We don't have paid usergroups and certainly wont in the future, but we do have a decently exclusive usergroup. The group is simply called Regulars, which requires at least an 80% agreement from the existing usergroup to be promoted into it. The group is based far more on maturity than activity, however you'll lose it if you're inactive for more than 30 days at a time or break any community guidelines.
I currently do not, but I do have a "Premium" group that currently is only able to be joined by winning some type of contest. I'm hoping to get this fixed once another forum software gets released and I can merge over to it (looks like it will be there soon, as in within a few months possibly). I may add in this user group once I make the switch since it is only fair enough to make sure that people are noticed for being awesome and excellent members without them having to do anything more than what they have done.
If I did have a forum, then yes. 1 for VIP members because they have contributed to the forum and paid, which means better membership and for special members, members who have been loyal for ages.
It depends a lot on your memberbase and what you can do to get them more active. Things like colored usergroups and private forums can mean a lot on certain types of forums, so it's really important to figure out what will best motivate your users.
FP has things like RAs, VCs, Sponsors, and a few other super secret groups. It does help people push for changes and such in the staff team.
Yes, I have previously seen both VIP and Donator type ranks which encouraged users to donate or to contribute. It was weird however because Donators had the right to issue warnings, handle moderation queue and the topic moderation tools like they were mini-moderators- people could literally pay to become a moderator...
Oh no, I don't mean groups for members who donate to the site, they donated, good karma. I'm talking about groups that require money to get other things normal members can't get.
Yes, well, not free exactly, but we do have several "founder" groups. Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum.These were reserved for people who donated money to us in order for us to create and run sakuga city. Those are exclusive. No one will ever get a founder title again. There is a hidden donator group though and founders have access. Future donators (if any) will be given a Donator rank and allowed access to that.
We have an up and coming Content/Editors group that will be reserved for people who write reviews and articles for the site. Those won't be paid positions, but there are plans to reward people who are regular contributors. We're also returning our podcast, but rebranding for Sakuga City, so contributors to that will be rewarded. In the past, we had interviewed famous anime voice actors and such, so we hope to do stuff like that again. It's good to give back to the people. 😀
On another site, we had a Council. That was a group of valued members who were there to represent the community and had a direct line to the staff. All it ended up doing was give people a reason for narcissism. They were being really bossy out and about the forum, so the council was shelved and one or two of it's better members were given staff positions.
We also had a sort of Exclusive club that was kept secret. It was more or less a place where people could break the spam rules on the site. People who were inside, voted on who to bring in every once in a while to keep it active. It was initially set up to reward people for some work they did promoting the site back in the early 00's and as the years went on it turned into a secret club.
On my forum there's VIP and Staff, those are the only "special" groups. If someone donates they get a special rank but not a separate group. I like the idea of a valued contributor/member group for the future.
I'm just wondering if you would have a VC group on your forum and if you did, would you make 2 one for staff and one for members or just 1 for both. I don't know what I would do because I would might of just made 2 one for retired admins/TL and one for TM's and normal members. I don't know.
Super secret groups? Tell us.. 
