How To Manage And Develop Your Forum

[Deleted member 44219]

Hey there everyone. If you have just started up a forum and don't have a clue about how to manage or develop one then I have some tips for you. Keep focus as reading these will teach you how to manage a forum.

Develop Your Forum

1. Once you've started up your forum, you need to make it stand out. Try changing the colours, theme and adding info panels. Try looking at other forums to get an idea but don't copy theirs.
2. If you're forum has no users coming in then there are ways to grow it. You could go onto other forums or social media to gain users. You could ask friends to join or create dummy accounts to give the illusion of other users being present. Making fake accounts is a way to tell some people that there is a growing community on your forum. Do not reveal that you've used dummy accounts until your forum has about 100 - 250 users.
3. Add pages to your forum such as a newsletter or FAQ page. A newsletter gives your users info for upcoming changes and events. A FAQ answers questions that your users frequently have or may ask.
4. Make sure you hire Moderators/Administrators for your forum. This will make your forum a safer place. If your forum has ~100(Less than 100) users then do not have more than 3 Moderators/Administrators. If you're the only Administrator and the site becomes too big then you are going to struggle keeping the site a float in terms of moderation.
5. Let users have fun. Do not ruin their fun because they swore or just said an innocent joke that you took offense to.
6. Listen to feedback from users. If they criticize the site, don't delete their account but instead listen. Every single bit of feedback counts to developing a much better site and experience.
7. Once your site starts to grow, add new features and have events to keep users posting and having fun. A forum with no updates, changes or events can be a forum that will die out fast.

Manage Your Forum

1. Keep security up-to-date and perform maintenance. Having good security stops hackers, spammers and scammers from getting in but remember that they all have a way of getting around security. A maintenance check is useful for if something goes wrong in your forum or you need to perform a post wipe or mass account deletion. It's best to perform maintenance every month.
2. Train your staff. Training your staff to be responsible and to not falsely delete someones account is a great way to avoid getting your forum damaged because of bad Administration. Train your staff probably at least every 2 - 3 months.
3. Only Delete accounts that have done something bad. If someone on your forum was racist or said an offensive joke then that's the time to strike. If someone swore or criticized the forum then let them be. And remember that people have ways of by passing censored words.
4. Try to keep the immature kids at bay. If someone on your forum has bad grammar, uses too many emojis and exclamation marks then they're most likely a kid. Try telling the kid to stay off the site, improve their grammar and their behaviour(If they're rude to others). If they do not obey by what you say to them in 7 days then delete their account without further notice. Nobody likes a forum filled with kids.

That is all of the advice I could offer for developing and managing your forum. If you have anymore advice then please post it in the comments. Thanks for reading and hope this helped.