Lots Of FP Clones....

[D]

lately ive been visiting a few forums that members of fp have created and ive seen atleast 10 fp style sites with the same forums (text ads, basic promotion etc😉 some of them are on free forum host's some have tld's .

im getting very confused because one of them had the same modifications on it and had alot of the same members.. i dont know who is the clone now lol is fp a clone? my head is baffled.

and cant you lot not think of your own ideas? i mean its easy to just copy a site but you wont ever get anywhere, you need to be creative think up your own ideas dont just copy a forum...


Dean

 

[AquaTeen]

Well promotion forums weren't started here as well. It's a popular genre and continues growth as more and more people are starting forums. The popularity is based on the fact that most new forums owners believe that a promotion forum is the best place to gain more members for their community. Though it is untrue, the genre continues to bring in a lot of new membership.

I joined this forum under the same thought many years ago. Honestly the only reason I have posted on other promotion sites is for packages. And even though I have found much better ways to drive traffic to my site, I still stick around here because of the great community.

 

[Nuke]

Yeah, promotion/advertising forums are VERY common.

FP is one of the oldest (I think), and it is also the largest.

FP members tend to appear in other advertising/promotion forums for the reason that it further expands their SEO rankings, site exposure, etc.

And, as Whaturmuva said, many people also are here for the community.

 

[Loading]

ForumPromotion is the biggest forum of the promotion genre so it's common for it to be used as base for other forums of this genre.

 

[Justin]

What's wrong with free forum hosts?

 

[death180]

most people don't like them.

I think zetaboards is the only "good" one.

 

[SheepishWolf]

most people don't like them.

I think zetaboards is the only "good" one.

And even they have their downs.
I don't think that there is any real definition for "good" as it it vague and everyone has different expectations and variations of their opinion for "good".

As long as there's a good idea, there will be people who think they can make a quick forum ripping the original then get popular. It's always going to happen, why post more topics about it when it'll never stop? Whether there's five hundred topics about it on every forum on the internet, there will be some noobs who will copy. It's like mistakes; no matter how much everyone dislikes them, there will always be more to come regardless.

 

[David]

lately ive been visiting a few forums that members of fp have created and ive seen atleast 10 fp style sites with the same forums (text ads, basic promotion etc😉 some of them are on free forum host's some have tld's .

Basically members off this site seeing the potentiality of a promotion forum, and then creating one. (something I'd suggest not to do)

im getting very confused because one of them had the same modifications on it and had alot of the same members.. i dont know who is the clone now lol is fp a clone? my head is baffled.

Usually, the "mother" site is the one that has the most members and posts, though it's possible to surpass a site like FP.

and cant you lot not think of your own ideas? i mean its easy to just copy a site but you wont ever get anywhere, you need to be creative think up your own ideas dont just copy a forum...

Chances are that FP was not the first promotion forum, unless someone could prove that to me. When you say "own ideas", what do you mean? Take the link jumble on FP. It was never owned by FP, so FP used someone else's idea, but it works, so it doesn't really matter where it came from. FP doesn't own the reviews section. Over centuries, people have been reviewing and likewise with packages. FP doesn't really own any of the services or ideas, as they have been either copied or derived from something else. It doesn't mean someone else can't use them; they are as free to use them, as FP is using them. But many of those do tend to copy FP, in light of what they see, but are usually mistake and confused as to the potentiality of a new promotion forum booming.

 

[fantanoice]

I'm pretty sure Hireem (or whatever it was called... started with an H) was around before FP. They've shut down since.

So no, FP was not the first.

 

[tech4talk]

Because half the people on here are just little kids who want to start a free forum and think that offering forum advertising will be popular. But the funny thing is this:

1) Kid comes to FP. Thinks its cool, wants his own forum.
2) Kid makes free crappy "forum promotion forum"
3) Kid promotes his Forum Promoting Forum on FP. People join the kids Forum Promotion website.
4) People that joined his forum promotion website, promote their forums on his forum promoting website.
5) And it goes round and round

I'm not kidding when I say kids either. A lot of people are young here and youll find that most "forum promoting" website are ran by young kids with bad grammar. Making a promotion website is lame in my eyes seeing as its just an endless chain of promotions. I like seeing awesome unique forums here that arent about promoting.

Lets face it, when you start a promotion website on FP and advertise it here, you get all the SAME people from FP on all the little promoting websites. Its like a little network of kids promoting their website to eachother and it doesnt really do anything.

 

[agentmanningctu]

It seems you're under the impression that FP was the first successful promotion forum.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying FP isn't the best, I'm just saying it's not the first forum ever.

 

[ZachS]

ForumPromotion is the biggest forum of the promotion genre so it's common for it to be used as base for other forums of this genre.

That is a pretty hasty assumption.

 

[CyberFreak]

There were others around but when I started FP, i aimed to make it unique. Back when i started FP, nearly every single advertisement forum was on Invisionfree. I personally didn't really like Invisionfree and started something different while keeping the promotion concept. I went with phpBB as back then, a phpBB promotion forum was rare (i am not even sure if there were any others on phpBB back then at all). All the Invision people used to say we wouldn't last and that we made a mistake but look at us now. Funnily enough all them are now closed.

What i am trying to say is that you need to be different and you can use ideas but make it different. We were using a different forum software and that alone added a whole different feel and allows us to do different things straight out of the box. Nowadays there are promotion forums on all softwares so you wouldn't be able to do the same. More recently the bubble ads. Yes the concept was already done by other forums but we implemented it differently. They used to put it in the overall footer or just on the index page. We decided to put it somewhere where the content was and somewhere people would see it more. It is an idea based on something that you have edited to make more unique. Nowadays you can't really do anything completely unique. Anything you try will have been done the same or similar by someone else. By all means look at other forums and then think how you could implement something similar but better.

Copying rules, forum names and descriptions and services exactly will not get you anywhere. Use your brain, experiment and trial things. We have added services or features here in the past and removed them. Don't be afraid to try new services, new features or new guidelines. If members don't like something they will let you know and you can never be sure of a reaction until you implement it. Members will tend to be very objectionable to start with but over time they will get used to it. Humans naturally don't like change much but after a couple of weeks you would see the true opinion of the members after they have let it settle down. The bubble ads caused us massive headaches with members yelling and complaining to us left right and centre but a week of trying to get members to suggest improvements and a few tweaks later, members seemed to have accepted it and liked it (well to be honest we haven't had any member new or old say anything negative about it in the last few months that i know of while people have asked how we have done it)

 

[AnAccount]

Because half the people on here are just little kids who want to start a free forum and think that offering forum advertising will be popular. But the funny thing is this:

1) Kid comes to FP. Thinks its cool, wants his own forum.
2) Kid makes free crappy "forum promotion forum"
3) Kid promotes his Forum Promoting Forum on FP. People join the kids Forum Promotion website.
4) People that joined his forum promotion website, promote their forums on his forum promoting website.
5) And it goes round and round

I'm not kidding when I say kids either. A lot of people are young here and youll find that most "forum promoting" website are ran by young kids with bad grammar. Making a promotion website is lame in my eyes seeing as its just an endless chain of promotions. I like seeing awesome unique forums here that arent about promoting.

Lets face it, when you start a promotion website on FP and advertise it here, you get all the SAME people from FP on all the little promoting websites. Its like a little network of kids promoting their website to eachother and it doesnt really do anything.

I hate to say it, but I may be young but I'm not a "kid" either. I'll be 23 next year to be exact. I thought of starting my own advertisement forum, but I saw some of the struggles that other advertisement forums went through and immediately dropped the idea. And not all free forum hosts are bad, either. One of the first free forum hosts that were actually pretty good to me was ProPHPBB. Sure, now days I use advanced hosting and now days my site has a TLD, and we just recently did a revamp of our forum But the one thing you got to remember is that all forums start off somewhere, and free hosting is actually a really good place to start. I find free hosting a good way to begin because you don't want to jump the gun and go right to advanced hosting if you don't have any experience, do you? Free hosting is a good way to get that beginner's experience and it's also a way to find out if you'll like running a forum in general or not. So really, it's not exactly fair to say that all forums on free hosts are crap, because that's not exactly true, nor is it true to say that all forums on free hosts will fail, because that's not true either.

The only way a forum fails at all is if the administrator in question fails to show any dedication to his or her forum. And this doesn't have to be on advanced hosting either, it can be on free hosts. I'm a member of one forum in particular that came up in 2004, is on a free host, and to this day they are still on a free host and they are really doing well.

 

[tech4talk]

By kids I mean 11 year olds. Literally, kids. So its understandable that an 11 year old has a free forum host, because most 11 year olds dont have credit cards to pay for hosting.

But yea, free-hosts are an OKAY way if you are new to forums to get a vibe as to how it all works.

 

[D]

i started on free forum hosts when i was 15 and my forum grew popular so i bought a domain just 3months later and struggled to even get a mysql dump from them... in would suggest you find a free host with fantastico or another script installer and install phpbb or whatever other forum they have that best suits your needs, free forum hosts are difficult at the very least, i remember an ffh that was charging $30 for an sql dump... when i got back into websites at the age of 18 i immediatly got a paid host and a domain name to save any troubles down the line.

and back on topic, i find it better to create a forum in a niche thats less populated and not a duplicate of another successful forum , which is tbh the lazy way.. you cant expect to make a duplicate of a forum that is almost identical (structure wise) and become successful , i have seen multiple forums with package team and all the same forums as this one and it baffles my head to think that people are getting more and more lazy and becoming less creative in the way they create and run their forums , if you want to make an advertisement forum go ahead but try to make it original not a dupe of another site, this goes for any niche you choose..

Dean.

 

[David]

Because half the people on here are just little kids who want to start a free forum and think that offering forum advertising will be popular. But the funny thing is this:

1) Kid comes to FP. Thinks its cool, wants his own forum.
2) Kid makes free crappy "forum promotion forum"
3) Kid promotes his Forum Promoting Forum on FP. People join the kids Forum Promotion website.
4) People that joined his forum promotion website, promote their forums on his forum promoting website.
5) And it goes round and round

I'm not kidding when I say kids either. A lot of people are young here and youll find that most "forum promoting" website are ran by young kids with bad grammar. Making a promotion website is lame in my eyes seeing as its just an endless chain of promotions. I like seeing awesome unique forums here that arent about promoting.

Lets face it, when you start a promotion website on FP and advertise it here, you get all the SAME people from FP on all the little promoting websites. Its like a little network of kids promoting their website to eachother and it doesnt really do anything.

The fact that you're discriminating against "kids" isn't making you look any more mature than them. Not all new promotion forums are run by kids, and potentially, the kid would do better than the adult. Note that the WWW and Internet aren't very old, so someone in their 20's would probably have a better understanding than someone in their 30's. Also, from observation, promotion forums aren't the dominating niche here. It would probably be more gaming and discussion, but why doesn't the same logic apply to them? There really isn't many unique forums here; most people did not think of their idea from nothing.

 

[Dartz]

Yea, this is happening a lot! But FP is most successful place than every other