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Shawn Gossman submitted a new Article:
Forum Administration - #1
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Forum Administration - #1
Forum Administration - Part #1
By: Shawn Joseph Gossman
Owner, WeatherBB.com
I have decided to write some Forum Administration articles. This will be the first article in this series. These articles will be basic principles, tips and strategies on creating, managing and promoting a message forum in a professional and successful manner while having a good time. Please show your support by leaving a comment or two on my articles and sharing them in social bookmarking, with friends, family and others whom you think would be interested in reading.
Step 1 - Planning
Don't jump the gun and rush into creating your forum. Start planning first! Think of a niche or topic that you want to base a forum off of. Make sure it will be a popular niche and something you will stay into because you don't want to waste a good forum due to losing interest in it, I have done this and it is no fun. Decide a good name for it! You don't need a slogan just yet, that can be all in the name. For example if you want to start a webmaster forum, don't just call it "Webmaster Forum", be unique and plan it and give it a good and catchy name.
You also want to decide on how your going to host it. You can start out on a free forum hosting service but chances are the domain name will be long and your forum will have advertisements all over it. Consider going with shared hosting! You can almost get it free these days with all the coupons and offers out there. Plus with shared hosting, you can get your own domain name. If you do get a domain name, I suggest sticking with a .com top level domain (TLD) because it is easier to remember and the most common used. You should also stay away from hyphens and numbers in your domain and keep it as short as possible. There are all sorts of domain suggestion tools that you can find on Google to help you choose the right domain.
If you go with hosting, next you want to decide which forum software to use. You can go all out and get vBulletin or IP.Board if you want a good premium software but be prepared to pay over $100.00 for good forum software. You can also find good free software such as MyBBoard and ImperialBB. Free software is a good platform to start out on because it provides most of the same features as paid software and anytime you wish to upgrade to a paid software, you can most likely do it using merging tools.
Step 2 - Install and Manage
Step two will be installing your forum...
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