Getting forums off the ground

[monkeyhead]

Hi,
I own a computer technology related forum.
I'm keen to really get it going by getting more members, more members posting and more content.
Is there any advice anyone could give from either previous experince that can help me to some extent gain my targets? Obviously its not going to happen over night, but I really am new to the whole website / domaining industry.
Many thanks,
Matt

[dodo1]

Hallo, Matt. Advertising is probably the best way to go if you want your forum
to grow fast. However, this would cost money, of course, but you will see the
best results. Besides you have to keep the forum "look" active by writing posts
and threads every day and by replying to members' posts. New members will
join your forum as soon as it has got new discussions on a daily basis. But, as
said before, I'd especially go for advertising to boost your forum fast.

By the way, I deleted the link to your forum in your post above, because you
may not advertise your websites and/or services in any of the gold discussion
forums. Thanks for your understanding.

[Mr.Domains]

Hi Matt,
Two options, one costs $10, the other costs $50:

1) Head over to the F$ Sales/Auctions forum and purchase 2000 F$ for $10. Then post in the Earn F$ by posting forum offering 100 F$ for a signup and 10 posts. Within a couple of days you will have 20 members and 200 posts, or even more if you reply to some of the posts. I have kick-stated several forums this way.

2) Spend $50 on Google Adwords credit. This should be enough to run a campaign for roughly 2 weeks, and should attract you around 500 visitors. If even 20% of those sign up, that's 50 members, and remember these are genuine members unlike the first method, so they will hopefully stick around.

But the most important tip is to make sure you have installed the appropriate SEO hack for your forum. Otherwise google will just index the homepage with very little text appart from the forum titles, but with a SEO hack google will indexing each and every content-rich post.

Hope this helps!

[SouthernTn]

Hi,
I own a computer technology related forum.
I'm keen to really get it going by getting more members, more members posting and more content.
Is there any advice anyone could give from either previous experince that can help me to some extent gain my targets? Obviously its not going to happen over night, but I really am new to the whole website / domaining industry.
Many thanks,
Matt

The Mod_Rewrite is available for the 3.5 version of vB as plugin feature.. takes less than 1 minute to install it.

[monkeyhead]

Hey,
Sorry didnt realise that I couldnt put my link!But thanks for your advice dodo1.

Mr.Domains, Thanks for the tips, might just do that.By the way do you know of the seo hack for vbulletin?

Again thanks to SouthernTn but I think we might already have mod_rewrite on, but I'll Check on that

Still open to more advice and suggestions!

Btw where can I optimize my site for keywords to use in ad words?
Many thanks,
Matt

[SouthernTn]

the hack hes talking about is the Mod_Rewrite, and I checked your forums and its not installed I don't believe.. A good way to find out is, your urls will look like http://www.dnforum.com/f76/getting-f...nd-110303.html

[monkeyhead]

Ah thanks, Installed the hack now.
Fingers crossed it will help the site get a bit more listed
Matt

[SouthernTn]

works, but you're getting errors .. by the looks of them, they could be fixed within minutes, or probably a missed place code somewhere

[Pim(P)]

Also look for a link exchange with nice related sites to boost you number of visitors.

[Frontline]

Is there a good tutorial or easy plugin to do this for 3.0.7? I haven't been able to find a good resource yet.

[SouthernTn]

Is there a good tutorial or easy plugin to do this for 3.0.7? I haven't been able to find a good resource yet.

3.0.7 don't allow plugins I believe. But, you can do this hack for the 3.0.7 version. vBulletin.org and search for mod_rewrite

[monkeyhead]

works, but you're getting errors .. by the looks of them, they could be fixed within minutes, or probably a missed place code somewhere

Sorted the errors out!
And removed adsense
Just got to save and invest in some adwords credit and buy some dnf when I have a little spare cash
Matt

[unknowngiver]

Try out www.domains4free.org

32+ SITES with there banner showing and the prices r lower then 1 site advertising!!

2$ for 1 day ONLY!!! {BANNER ADVERTISING}..some of the sites are PR3!

cant get a better way to get your site popular..now can u