Aqua-Soft Forums

How to bring a forum to life?

So I've created a new forum for uni students.

and it's looking really good. lots of sections etc, nice colour scheme and design...

I have a total of 5 members, who are interested in where its gonna go etc... but... No one is really starting any conversation.

I know AS continually dies, but at least people come back to it when they have questions etc. I'm wondering how do i bring it to life?

Once others see that there's other people in the forum, i think the ball will get moving, but...

how did AS start?

Also- side note, the forum is using PHB33, on forumotion (*coz im a noob, and am finding it easy to use this site to make my forum) how do i create a news thread? like what we have here??

#499493

I've been wondering this myself.

#499499

Dude, CTMD has the same damn problem.

We were open 2 months. We had a grand total of 14 members, only about 4 of which actually posted.

I'm also hugely interested, as we just dropped CTMD because of so low traffic.

We used google. Added our site to their search que. That's when more and more people registered... but were never heard from again.

I haven't a clue :(. Like Levi, I'm dying to find out.

#499507

You need to offer people something that they're interested in. Tell friends who are interested. Forums don't grow into blossoming communities overnight.

#499509

Forumotion? You rule :D.

Well you may want to advertise it, on the net, add it to google.

hmm, If you want to create a news thread, just open the portal, and make all topics appear from the news forum on the page. All the options for that is in the portal configuration.

#499513

i've advertised to about 20 people now... and told them to spread the news. All are excited but only 5 have joined. lol

I guess what I really need to do is advertise everywhere at once, and designate a weekly discussion online each week to get it started. Like its a uni student collective that meets once a week, but its open to all uni students. So if i force the collective to join and join in a set topic discussed at the meeting people might latch on...

As for news, i've got it working now... but i need a way to display that news on another page. portal is ugly... lol, i want to embed all the news in another page.

up until now i've been using iWeb's blog feature but it means that only i can submit news...

#499538

Well, i just basically started out by telling friends, then their friends told their friends and so on. Also added to all search engines, link referral site, then posted signatures on other related forums I visit. Took some time to get it going of course, about 1 1/2 months to get 100 members for me, but then it really got a traffic boost...

I'd just say make signatures, threads (will allowed), advertise as much as you can :)

#499541

Meh. Off Topic... we're opening up CTMD again... running along with this thread to see if it could help :P

#499544

seeing as we're all doing off topic...

how do I embed a table's text from a page into another using html?

specifically, portal's news section onto a page design i've created myself...

I'm using iWeb to do the page design, and I can use html snippets to insert blocks of html if I need to.

#499549

Dude, CTMD has the same damn problem.

We were open 2 months. We had a grand total of 14 members, only about 4 of which actually posted.

I'm also hugely interested, as we just dropped CTMD because of so low traffic.

We used google. Added our site to their search que. That's when more and more people registered... but were never heard from again.

I haven't a clue :(. Like Levi, I'm dying to find out.

Spammers?

#499578

Nope! That's what bugged us! People registered, filled out their profiles, looked around, left, then never came back :(

#499584

Hahaha, noobs.

People are pretty insane, trying to get into my forum. But i blocked it off due to heavy leeching.

I know i'll receive a lot of criticism for it, but it's the truth

#499585

Hahaha, noobs.

People are pretty insane, trying to get into my forum. But i blocked it off due to heavy leeching.

I know i'll receive a lot of criticism for it, but it's the truth

I think gui forums must be easier to get off the ground...

#499606

yeah, so technically you're cheating :P. We're doing something unique, n00b :P. haha

not to mention, you're using forumotion crapware. So that doesn't count either, :P technically it's not a real site.

Just like a myspace with your own domain. That's it.

#499608

I think gui forums must be easier to get off the ground...

I got a gui site. It's not doing as good as Bapestar's gui site, which I keep getting banned from lol. You do not want to know what having a gui site is like. It's a war on jealousy lol.

Sometimes they get shot down and get DDOS's and I can't register on any other gui site without getting banned, people are more lucky if they don't have on.

#499610

^ in other words, noobfight!

#499611

I never understood why admins don't want noob's, they will keep forms very active.... with questions. But eventually noobs learn and become an active part of a Community. Everyone was a noob at one point.

#499613

yep. my first ever theme was ridiculed... it was a wood theme after all.

now, my Loco theme has been downloaded 2000 times.

As for noobs... I think there needs to be a balance, if the whole board is noobs then nobody new will want to join...

#499622

I got a gui site. It's not doing as good as Bapestar's gui site, which I keep getting banned from lol. You do not want to know what having a gui site is like. It's a war on jealousy lol.

Sometimes they get shot down and get DDOS's and I can't register on any other gui site without getting banned, people are more lucky if they don't have on.

so do I, and we havent ever had major problems like ddos... people getting banned, very few compared to whats been going on in other sites :P. Realtively quiet, new people posting, its not the hard... its fun lol

#499623

@Levi I know this is off topic, but i just think its weird that your first theme was a wood theme, because mine was too.

#499625

lol...morning wood.

#499643

I got a gui site. It's not doing as good as Bapestar's gui site, which I keep getting banned from lol. You do not want to know what having a gui site is like. It's a war on jealousy lol.

There must be a good reason for why you're getting banned, we won't just ban you for no reason ;).

Don't get me wrong though, some noobs actually become avid contributors to the forum right off the bat. But if you join UGUI with no knowledge for skinning or creating wallpapers and the like, then expect to get banned.

And we have a domain, www.UndergroundGUI.com... We haven't switched to VBulletin yet though.

Some of us are young and don't know how to manage paying for domains and what not (like me), so stop *****ing about it and just wait until then...

#499687

I have like three new walls up lol.Thousands of NFR things, and dozens of icon mods. :P

Generally you get banned at *cough*ya know*cough* for no reason. (If you re running another site)

(The worst part of it is having two of the same members at two different sites because the may not share things inside that forum only)

Speaking of releases and domains, I was going to register a domain with godaddy, but mom wouldn't let me, so instead, I subscribed to DeviantART, and we will keep paying it...and paying it... and so on.

I don't like Vbulletin (As being an owner admin of a board) because you have to buy most of the awesome themes like iskin_black.

If you want a boost for your forum levi, your gonna have to put aside it being a forum (only?) for university students. You could make it also for Mac Themers and such ;)

#499690

I have like three new walls up lol.Thousands of NFR things, and dozens of icon mods. :P

Generally you get banned at *cough*ya know*cough* for no reason. (If you re running another site)

(The worst part of it is having two of the same members at two different sites because the may not share things inside that forum only)

Speaking of releases and domains, I was going to register a domain with godaddy, but mom wouldn't let me, so instead, I subscribed to DeviantART, and we will keep paying it...and paying it... and so on.

I don't like Vbulletin (As being an owner admin of a board) because you have to buy most of the awesome themes like iskin_black.

If you want a boost for your forum levi, your gonna have to put aside it being a forum (only?) for university students. You could make it also for Mac Themers and such ;)

ehm.. you also need to buy iskin black for phpbb.

second where did you get thousands of NFR things? I think I saw less than 50

#499704

Ehm, you need to buy a domain and some hosting ;)

#499705