Making, Marketing, and Running a Message Board

Running a message board can be a fun and satisfying experience. Getting a bunch of like-minded people together in a place where you make the rules can be fun. I myself ran a board (about a video game called Animal Crossing) for over two and a half years, although it’s pretty much dead now.

 

There are dozens of free board hosts, utilizing a fair number of different softwares (like phpBB, myBB, SMF, IPB), out there, and it’s easy to create one. It’s definitely a good idea to shop around before you decide on one though. Even two hosts that use the same software might be totally different in terms of reliability, support, advertising style (you don’t want one with really annoying ads on their boards like pop-up ads), and flexibility. The downsides with free hosts is that you have less free reign, though unless you’re a coding genius, you probably wouldn’t be doing much with it anyway. Also, you get stuck with a subdomain of the host site (common examples are YOURSITE.boardhost.com or boardhost.com/YOURSITE), which may end up being harder for users to remember. Some free hosts allow you to pay for a real domain, which is nice.

 

My recommendation would be http://freeforums.org. My forum wasn’t on it, but boy do I wish it had been. When in doubt, find a forum you like and ask the administrator what it uses.

 

Before we start, here is a glossary of some of the terms I’ll be using. A lot of forum-related terms are interchangeable and can get confusing. Here’s how I’ll use them.

 

Board/Forum: The entire discussion website. For sanity’s sake, I’ll just use “board”.

Forum/Section: A single discussion area within the board. Example: On a board for discussing Nintendo games, there would be a forum for Mario, one for Legend of Zelda, and so on.

Subforum: A forum within another forum, sometimes accessible from the board index, sometimes not. Going back to the Nintendo forum example, there might be a forum for general Nintendo discussion, and a subforum of that for more obscure Nintendo franchises like Fire Emblem or Chibi-Robo.

Template/Style/Skin: The coloration and appearance of the forum. Most forum hosts come with a list of pre-made styles to choose from, and some let you edit existing ones or make your own, if you have the skill.

Moderator/Mod: Special users with the power to edit, delete, and move topics and posts, either throughout the entire board or only in certain forums. Depending on the forum software, they may also be able to split and merge topics.

Administrator/Admin: Special users with power over the board. You, as creator, will always be an admin unless you step down. Admins can ban other users from visiting or posting on the board, edit the number, descriptions, and placement of the forums, edit the board skin and logo, and do all sorts of other things. They also have all moderator powers.

Rank: A small bit of text that appears under a username. Typically, they change depending on the number of posts the user has.

 

Getting Started:

 Once you’ve made a forum, you may want to immediately advertise it to the world, but don’t. There are a few things you should do beforehand.

 

Choose a fitting skin and get a logo. If you can’t make a logo yourself, there are places like Forum Promotion that you can request graphics from. Or you could ask a friend who has the know-how. Never use the default skin and logo. Not only are they painfully bland, but they make it seem like you don’t care about the board if you can’t even be bothered

Get all the forums set up. Ideally, when you start out, you should have between 10-15 forums. This keeps your board looking compact. If you have 500 posts spread throughout 30 forums, that’s an average of 16 posts per forum, and some may end up with little or no posts. This makes your board seem empty. If you have those same 500 posts spread between 13 forums, that’s an average of nearly 40 posts per forum. Much better. Here is a basic plan for the kind of forums you should have. Let’s say you’re designing a board for middle and high school students to chat, get advice, and discuss problems.

 

You will want…

 

A forum for news and announcements about the forum.

A forum for users to ask questions about the forum, give suggestions, and comment.

A forum for new users to introduce themselves.

Anywhere from 2-5 forums on your forum topic. Going by the school example, you might have a forum for general school chat, one for homework help, one for advice on relationships or bullying, and one for venting or ranting.

Anywhere from 3-6 off-topic forums. You might have a general off-topic chat forum, 1-2 forums for movies, TV, music, books, and video games (I’d do one for the latter and one for the first four), a forum for word and roleplaying games, a forum for users to post creative works of theirs (like art, stories, poems, and music), and a forum for users to advertise their communities.

 

Once your board gets going, you can see which topics are getting a lot of attention and make new forums (moving the old topics to the new forum) as you go along. So if 60% of the topics in the “Music/Movies/TV/Books” forum are about books, you could split it up and make “Books” its own board.

 

Get some topics and posts in the forums. You might want to enlist the help of some good online or real-life friends for this part. 2-3 will work, but the more the merrier. Try to get at least 2-3 topics and 8-12 posts in each forum, to give the board a semblance of activity. Even if said friends aren’t interested in the board topic, they can still post in the off-topic forums.

 

Set all the settings as you want them.

 

Make a rule list. Make sure to make it as clear and concise as possible. Keep it in a visible place on the board and make sure that any and all rules you have are on it. Some softwares have a global announcement feature that lets you post a topic that appears on the top of every forum. If you can, do this for your rule list. Don’t be unnecessarily strict. One of the few advantages small board have over large ones is the ability to have more relaxed rules. Don’t toss away the opportunity. If members of a large board where the rule list is longer than the average novel see your board and its, “No swearing, no spamming, no flaming, no porn, use common sense” rules, they might very well end up joining.

 

Advertising:

 Your board won’t grow if nobody knows about it. One way to get the word out is to advertise in other circles, especially other boards. If you have real-life friends who are interested in the board topic, put something out on your favorite social networking site, or tell them in real life.

 

When advertising on other boards, be civil and respectful. Follow the rules. If they only allow advertising in specific places, only advertise in those places. If they require you get a certain number of posts before you advertise, post those posts (but make sure they’re good posts, not just “lol” or “i agree”). And try to stay active once you’ve advertised. It’s disrespectful to just leave. Also, don’t promote a feature of your board that doesn’t exist.

 

Since it would be hard to stay active on dozens of boards, try to determine which forums would be most worth your time. Don’t advertise on boards that are on the same subject as yours but a lot bigger. You probably won’t get too many members. Try advertising on boards with similar focuses to that of yours. If yours is about Mario, advertise on a Zelda forum. If yours is about birdwatching, advertise on one about pet birds. Find boards that would likely have people interested in your subject, but that are not about that subject.

 

Other things you can do to get the word out are topsites and affiliation.

 

Topsites are lists of boards and websites. Sometimes the focus is very broad, other times it is specific. They work like this: you add a link to your site and an image and description to go with it, and then place a special link (usually an image link) somewhere conspicuous on your board. You then have members click the link and vote for your board. Boards that get the most votes rise to the top of the list and get traffic and attention, which can very well result in members. Sometimes the rankings are reset every month so newer sites have a chance at #1.

 

Affiliation is when two boards agree to place the other’s link in a conspicuous spot on their board. Sometimes the link is presented as a small 88x31 image, often called an “affiliate pic” or “affy”.

 

Just remember that your board needs to be unique. It needs to stand apart from the dozens of other (bigger) boards about the same subject. Websites or blogs with information about the board subject are big draws.

 

Running the Place:

 So the board’s gotten off its feet. Here are some tips for running the place.

 

Your Conduct

• Abide by your own rules.
• Be active. Engage yourself in the community. Be devoted to the forum. Crack jokes. Laugh when the other members laugh. Have fun. That’s what a forum is all about.
• Never ban a member without sending them an e-mail explaining why.
• Alternatives to banning include; taking away privileges (private messaging, custom rank, avatar, etc.) or taking away forum currency (if you have it).
• Don’t delete inactive accounts (unless they’re spambots). How would you like it if you decided to return to a board you left long ago, only to find that your account was deleted?
• Use proper grammar in all of your posts (unless the point of the topic is something like “post with really bad grammar”). You need to appear professional.
• Never create alternate accounts to make the board seem more active. It will always come back to bite you. And then give you rabies. Note that making alternate accounts for purposes of testing and events (pretending to be a hacker who took over the board or something) is okay.
• Don’t whine about your personal life or take offline conflicts online.
• Deal with punishments off the public boards. Don’t have a wall of shame or something where the names of banned members are posted.
• Be civil and respectful to your rival board owners. Don’t tell your members to spam rival boards. Don’t try to suck all the members of other boards to yours. Don’t criticize members of your board who spend time on others.

 

Other Staff Members

• Keep a decent ratio of staff to (active) members. I would recommend one mod for every 10-15 active members, and one admin (besides yourself) for every 30-40 active members. If you have three admins, five mods, and ten active members, newer members might get intimidated if it seems like everyone else is a mod or admin.
• Never hesitate to demote staff members that are not pulling their weight or are abusing their power. Just like a police officer shouldn’t be arresting people at random, mods and admins shouldn’t be locking topics and banning users at random.
• Don’t promote members to moderator or administrator unless you’re sure they will be a good one. Qualities of a good staff member are:

- Activity. Staff members need to be regular visitors to the board so they can address rulebreaking whenever it occurs.
- Intelligence. Staff should be smart, or at least know how to use proper grammar. Nothing says “unprofessional forum” like a mod or admin using chatspeak. They should also be familiar with all the board rules.
- Maturity. Staff should be able to keep a level head in all situations, and not get baited into doing something rash in a fit of temper.
- Helpfulness. Staff should be willing to answer any questions that members may have about the forum or its rules.
- Friendliness. Staff should post in topics, crack jokes, and have fun just like everyone else, but be ready to use their mod powers should things turn ugly.

• Public election of new staff members is typically a bad idea, as it can lead to things being more a popularity contest. You can, if you want, let the regular members narrow down a list of 2-5 finalists and then have the current staff decide from there.
• When moderators start out, don’t give them power over every forum. Start with a few, and if they do a good job, give them more power. On the same note, be sure that every mod has power over forums that are likely to attract spam and rulebreaking, such as advertising forums, word game forums, off-topic forums, and vent/rant forums.
• Make sure that staff members never lock topics without explaining why (unless the topic is obvious spam).
• It's a good idea to have a forum hidden from regular members where the staff can discuss private matters.

 

Community Atmosphere

• Encourage your members to be nice to one another, especially to new members. An older member might know that another saying “Go die” isn’t meant to be offensive, but a new member might think that the person means it. Then they leave.
• Ensure that members can join in the community as soon as they register. If you’re worried about spammers, you can enable user activation, which forces new users to activate their account via a link sent to their e-mail address, but that should be it. Admin activation (account activation that must be done by an administrator) is a very bad idea, as it forces new users to wait for you. Unless you have admins all over the globe who are on and checking for inactivated members 24/7, don’t do it. One exception would be if you have an intentionally closed community and don’t want random people discovering and joining.
• Once your forum gets going, shake things up with an event or contest. The prize could be a customized rank, an amount of forum currency (if your board has it), or addition to a special group of contest winners or VIP’s. Ideas for contests would be:

- You and your staff members register alternate accounts and post for a number of days. At the end, the members try to guess who was who.
You hide images in random posts (by editing them in) and challenge members to find them.
- A slight variation of the above idea, you hide clues to the location of the “true prize” (which you hide later). The first person to find the “true prize” wins.
- If your board is about a movie, TV show, book, or video game, you could hold a fan art or fan fiction contest, or a trivia quiz about it.
- You hold an internet scavenger hunt and challenge users to find images and articles of certain things.
- While not exactly a contest, April Fools’ jokes are always fun. Pretend the forum was hacked, pretend to resign, have all the staff members switch avatars, usernames, and signatures, or do whatever you want to mess with your members. My personal favorite was when I announced that I had developed an action MMORPG based on Animal Crossing, but the “Loading” screen was just an endlessly looping gif.

• Be fair and consistent when dishing out punishment. If a new member breaks a rule, the punishment should be exactly the same as if a veteran member broke that rule.
• Make sure that new members are greeted warmly and treated well.
• Encourage members to get signatures and avatars. Not only does it make the board seem more colorful and lively, it also makes it easier for new members, who can identify a member from the goofy cat next to all his posts instead of his username.

 

Miscellaneous

• Don’t hide more than a few forums from guest viewing. It makes the board seem closed-off and hostile to new people. You can hide some forums, like if you have music downloads, video game guides, or graphics tutorials that you want people to join before they can access.
• Don’t mess around with coding that you don’t understand.
• Be creative when naming ranks, currency, and forums. Mold them around your board focus. Let’s say you own a fishing board. Don’t make the ranks, “New Member” to “Advanced Member”. Don’t call the currency “gold” or “cash”. Don’t call the general chat forum “General Chat”. Call the ranks, “Perch” to “Pike” to “Blue Marlin”. Call the currency “worms” or “minnows”. Call the general chat forum, “Dock Talk” or “The Cooler”.
• If you can, add emoticons that fit your board.

The bane of board: the spambot. These are automated programs that register on boards en masse and post messages advertising products such as knockoff designer clothing, World of Warcraft gold, online gambling, and pornography (including images). Delete these posts and members as soon as possible. There are ways to prevent them from joining and posting, but depending on your host, some may not be possible, which is why proper research is a good idea. Spambots can typically break through e-mail activation and some CAPTCHA codes (those annoying pictures with distorted letters), so just those may not be enough.

 

One final note. Running a forum takes time and energy. Not all of them survive for more than a couple months. Don’t panic if you don’t get 100,000 posts and 5,000 members your first month.