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
its a whole site, with the forum just a part of the site...
it also includes a news page, calendar of upcoming events, a resources page and a place to post art etc...
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...
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.
I need to let out a *huge* facepalm right now.
You people don't own anything (BapeStar, Markoz). Forum motion or whatever does. You're simply giving them money, traffic, etc in return for special little bonuses.
If forummotion went down for whatever reason, you're screwed. You technically don't *own* a site. You just rent from forummotion. You don't have FTP rights, you can't add anything to it... it's just a free forum that gives away DNS domains and allows you to buy forum skins for *their* phpBB crap. Big whoop.
Sorry, just had to clear up the ego that was forming...
...
Egh, you people run good sites. BapeStar, yours has got to be the best *GUI (out of the like, 10 that emerged) site which branched from the members here. You get traffic. You get contributions. Your policies are just plain old whack, though. Banning people who don't know much about modding or GUI stuff? only allowing registrations once a month?! C'mon, that's just unethical. Now, if you were to open up a bit to what you classify as *leechers*, you could grow. Put up some things that members have made for cash. Get a donation system going. If you were to get a real site, and transfer all the progress you've made so far to real hosting, and a real site, and install IPB or vB or whatever on your own, *you* would be the one in control, it would be *your* site. No more "renting", so to speak.
Hell... it could even become as big as Aqua-Soft, or MacThemes, or god knows what else. You really don't see the possibilities and expandability you're missing out on...
@Phantom_lord, it is possible to run a semi-succesful site, even with a hoster like forumotion. Its just that if you ever wanna get as big as macthemes or aqua-soft you need real hosting, if you're fine with having a semi-large forum with little maintaince you can stick with that and still be fine, it just depends on what you want . Im also running mine on forumotion (galaxy gui) and have been getting great traffic and lots of posts, 7800 so far and 678 members.
if only .mac had forum hosting...
i gained a free two year .mac account this year which is my motivation for creating a site.
My blog is actually pretty good though, 17 views a day! 
(www.jrem95.wordpress.com)
A domain name for me soon though, and yes I know I am just "renting" from wordpress, but who really cares, they are a good host and are very popular, and work with my browser when I want to blog an article.
Making a site popular or a blog popular is you want something that someone wants, for instance, I provide articles and tech news, and soon to be, guides. It all depends on what audience you want to appeal to. For instance, if I wanted to attract government officials to my site, I would discuss politics and most likely make a forum so they could discuss it, or have campaigning services. If I wanted to appeal to business men I would talk about the economy and stocks and stuff like that, and have advice on what stocks to buy. Another important lesson is to not piss off your customers. If you ban them and they become some guy who is long popular and you ask them to come back, they aren't because you banned them earlier.
Also, Why I dropped my GUI site is just because there are too many of them and you guys are just in this constant war against each other "Don't share this!!" Common, if you don't want to share something, you dont post it anyway, because you know some guy from your site can download and post on another site, and what are you going to do about it? Ban the guy? Ok great you just banned a huge contributor to your forum and the stuff that he released on the other guy's site is still there, you just lost 2 things instead of 1. Poor you. It's almost pointless, just share what you have and everyone can have a nice GUI, if you don't want to share its simple, just don't share it with anyone, your friends, colleges etc.
#1) "Thousands" of NFR things? lol.
#2) Demonoid does the same thing we do, only allows registrations once per month or an invitation.
#3) Sharing stuff you made on another forum is perfectly fine, as long as you dont share things other people made on another forum.
#4)It's not up to me to buy a domain or whatever, i can't be bothered. I don't care for a large forum like AS or MTF. Our forum only has 139 members and ~3500 posts. That's fine for me. If it goes up, hooray. If not, oh well.
#5)Thanks for the compliment on the forums btw Phantom. It pays to have an elite community. Low quality releases means low quality members.
#2) Demonoid does the same thing we do, only allows registrations once per month or an invitation.
What's the point of this?! To make yourself feel special? >_> Don't want your own domain/hosting? Fine... but why deny potential members the right to register? That just doesn't make sense to me. It's like capping your own internet, why do it?!
To limit leechers.
Define a leecher. Someone who downloads work and doesn't post, right? So, what's the bad part of that? The more people use released work, the more popular the said work becomes.
Yes and no, they need to share something belonging to them. Most people who release on the forum dont care how popular their stuff becomes. They just want to share, but leechers just hang around and download everything everyone worked hard creating without sharing at all, which is does not work for us.
IMHO, I find that a little selfish :slant:
How is it selfish?
Yes and no, they need to share something belonging to them. Most people who release on the forum dont care how popular their stuff becomes. They just want to share, but leechers just hang around and download everything everyone worked hard creating without sharing at all, which is does not work for us.
I find it funny this is mentioned because sharing torrents of movies and music is definitely not something someone created (besides the movie studios and record labels). Sure, others may share legit items but come on.
Levi - mind posting a link to your site? I'm going to uni in 2 or 3 years so your site could come in handy.
I think what might really help is if you have a really good thread (or a few) and put it on stumbleupon and get it on all those social sharing/bookmark kinda sites. Digg it, and put it on directory sites like Google Directory and Yahoo! Directory. Also Google Analytics could help you find where your visitors are coming from and give you statistics that might help you improve hits.
I hope your site goes well!!
@Levi; .Mac does have site hosting, though. If it has the necessary requirements for PHP etc, you can get a copy of vB or IPB on there.
Im forum admin or mod since 2001, it has been always vbulletin and few times IPB and phpBB. Right now Im admin of 4 forums.
I recommand Vbulletin, but this is something you have to choose on your own.
My advice is, do not create many forums, subforums. Empty forums always looks bad. Start with 2, 3 forums and try to post on your own, something unique.
Choose for the main forum subject something not very popular, for example " used tyres collectors forum".
On the beggining you will have to cheat. Add few accounts on your own and post , post, post...
The iConpost app is not bad at all to start. It adds posts from yahoo groups into your forums. You can get 1000 posts over night.
Newsgroups integration is doing good job too. Your posts into newsgroups and newsgroups posts back into your forums.
Install SEO optimizing tools like vbseo.com
And pray..
With a bit of luck you can have a living forum in 6 months..
Good luck
A bit late, but Timan would tell you the same thing about avoiding extra forums and subforums. If there are no posts in them, they make the site look empty.
-NC
As off topic as it is, i love your signature sensimilla.
According to this philosophy, NC is hung like a moose.
I never understood why admins don't want , 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.
Just treat your forum like your shop and add many varities so that visitor can come and ejoy their stay at there. Just mind it that no body would like to visit empty shop even those people who would love to do only window shopping.
So start getting various and interesting topics and people will start to join your party as well.
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