First of all, I would like to say that this thread is NOT a review about my board, only recommendations about where I might be best to find paid advertising. Places like Facebook, Google, whatever.
Second of all, there are MANY forums out there that are in worse shape than mine and have thousands of posts. Why? Because of the people they know. I am seriously convinced that the majority of the activity that people receive on forums is because of the people that they know. If they don't know you or your forum, chances are they are not going to join. It's a sad reality, but it's the truth.
Third, advertising forums only work if they themselves are active. And even then they don't work. Why? Because what is the primary objective of an advertising forum? To promote other forums with various services provided, not necessarily to find other forums to go to. Look at the majority of the threads in Basic Promotion here on FP -- they have the last reply by the board owners themselves, and 80% of the posts in them are also by the board owners. It's amazing how fast threads rotate in there.
Fourth, I have been working by myself since Day 1 and I do not intend to allow anyone else to have access to my database. For the simple reason that I have seen TONS of boards get overrun by jealous second-in-commands who just want everything for him/herself and don't really care what happens to the board. I intend to avoid that at all costs on NFF.
Fifth, with the information that I have on the index page, squeezing the board anymore would make things look a lot more sloppier. However, I might make it an option in profiles to change the width should they not like the default.
Sixth, there are over 20 different color schemes to choose from once a member is registered. Also, there is an option to have minimal information on the index page and another option to have a lot of information -- it's pretty neat if I do say so myself. 🙂
Now Ragin, I will respond to your post specifically:
(1) What do you mean by "out-of-place?"
(2) Where have you seen that the software I'm getting has gotten bad reviews?
(3) I have tried switching to phpBB3, but two things happened: (a) I was flooded with spambots (for which I did not feel like cleaning them out everyday). I have not had one problem with spambots since I switched from phpBB back to the forum software I'm using now.
(b) People were complaining that I was using the same old theme and because phpBB does not have a feature where you can automatically install you MODs into every theme you have, I thought that this was a lot of unnecessary work. I don't have to install every little MOD into every little theme I install for the software I'm using.
(4) Wow, Japan is odd? Well, I don't think the Japanese will like reading that. Anyway, there really isn't a lot of Japan/Japanese forums out there, so I wanted to put a forum out there where you can learn different things about the language and about Japan itself. Not everyone is going to like Japan, that goes without saying. But to say that Japan is odd was not really necessary.
(5) Obviously you have not read my exchange thread if you don't think my exchanges were simple enough. The last offer I made was a 2-for-1 deal where I post 2 and the other person posts 1. You can't get much better than that.
From 2004 to the beginning of 2006, NFF did around 20,000 posts and had over 100 members. Obviously there were people that liked the design and wanted to continue posting. The way the board looks now is A LOT better than what it looked like before. I think the main reason why those people left was because I complained too much and started over a few times. Yes, I want a forum where people can be comfortable posting, but at the same time, make it so that I can easily add features and not be overrun by spambots.
