Is this a good beginning?

[MDC]

Yes I am an idiot and forgot to put a Link to the site in question - I apologize. The link is www.massdebate.club​

OK the aim of the end product is a general debating forum focused on news and current affairs. It will hopefully reach at least a steady size and consistency of traffic to bring in a small trickle of advertising income.

I want an anonymous administration - because past experience with my own and others small forums tells me the person in charge and staff cannot please all of the people all of the time but can apparently be hated by all of the people at the same time who wont be shy about letting said admin and staff know - and this can be personal. Where admin and staff (hopefully I will get busy enough to need some) are anonymous it reduces (hopefully) the personal nature of the hate.

I have started with a very small number of boards to try and give the appearance of activity - I have already got the final shape mapped out it is a case of when is the right time to move all the threads on the current boards onto the final ones. I currently have 30 threads, the final design has 13 boards.

I am in 2 minds about the appearance. I want a more modern appearance but am struggling to find a free theme that is right. I like the general appearance of the current theme but another part of me is thinking it too flat and boring.

I would appreciate feedback on this as a beginning. Thank you.

 

[Lorcan]

Your forum has a good structure and you have a fairly good idea of how to build your forum and your ideas are good.

However I would have to agree with you, about the forum looking fairly flat and boring, the colour is quite dull and does not bring your forum to life. Which would benefit you greatly, I would try and go for more of a vibrant theme, something that has a bit of life to it.

 

[MDC]

I do wonder in my crazier moments if it would be worth me taking the image file for the theme and redoing it - and changing the colours etc myself. Then again as we all know full well getting a forum off the ground is labour intensive enough (between promotion, thread starting post exchange promotion promotion content building) without taking on a full redesign from scratch.<br /><br />-- 31 Aug 2014, 19:25 --<br /><br />Anyone who knows myBB themes better than me I would appreciate suggestions

 

[MDC]

I have just upgraded to myBB 1.8 - and am having issues with the themes. The default one is not working properly and I have had to switch it off, the ones from 1.6 are messed up, and I do not like the one I have resorted to using because of very limited choice.
I will have another go at the default one later as it looks a lot nicer if I can get it to work. Other than that I just hope some more theme options appear soon.

 

[Darthmaul]

Hey there

The theme you are using now actually looks pretty good to me, what issues are you having specifically?

As far as the rest of the site goes, there are some categories with little or no topics, this is really a bad thing for starting forums. I would suggest, as a goal, 20 topics in each forum. This will definitely put on the facade of activity even if you are the only one posting. The reason I say put up about 20 topics in each forum is, when a new user registers, they are way more likely to reply to topics that are already in place, especially for new forums. As a goal, I would also set yourself up to make 5 topics a day, in assorted categories. This consistently creates new content for new users to see and reply to without having to come up with an original discussion topic themselves

Hope these tips helped you out, and I wish you luck with your new forum!

 

[MDC]

Hey there

The theme you are using now actually looks pretty good to me, what issues are you having specifically?

As far as the rest of the site goes, there are some categories with little or no topics, this is really a bad thing for starting forums. I would suggest, as a goal, 20 topics in each forum. This will definitely put on the facade of activity even if you are the only one posting. The reason I say put up about 20 topics in each forum is, when a new user registers, they are way more likely to reply to topics that are already in place, especially for new forums. As a goal, I would also set yourself up to make 5 topics a day, in assorted categories. This consistently creates new content for new users to see and reply to without having to come up with an original discussion topic themselves

Hope these tips helped you out, and I wish you luck with your new forum!

I dont really like the colour, there is no multi quote box, it does not allow the addition of extra categories on registration are issues of the top of my head.

As far as boards go I have actually just expanded the boards while doing the update. I started with only 3 boards - news, politics, and other to get a good number of debates going without the forum looking too bare. It was difficult at that point to know which final boards were going to be empty (I had the final design clear before using 3 temporary boards to open). Now I have expanded I will work on filling the empties with my 3 "characters".

 

[MDC]

I have now sorted the theme out so it looks completely different. Just got to concentrate on content and attracting new members.