Admin advice?

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

I just got a small forum set up, and I was wondering if any of you awesome admins had a little extra time to explain some of the do's and dont's of administrating forums, and maybe some suggestions on how I might improve it?

 

Thanks for your time:)

[matt--]

Rule #1 - Never enable html.

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

Rule #1 - Never enable html.

What? You have something against users embedding re-directs, viruses, and browser hijacks in their posts?

 

 

@RJM-

What kind of forum is it (i.e what's the forum's theme/topic)?

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

It's a combination of gamerclan organization, FNCS development, whatever else comes up. Currently those two are my focus, I'll add more subforums as they are A. needed, B. I want something else.

 

Since I'm just starting it I do have a section for setup suggestions if anyone wants to look at it.

link in sig

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

I suggest you disable anonymous posting. You currently have it so that anonymous users can post both replies as well as new threads. Usually when anonymous posting is enabled you're going to get a lot of useless, spammy posts as well as make it easier for your forum to be invaded/crapflooded.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Thank you jmac, I thought I had that turned off:)

[Det. Bart Lasiter]

I tried visiting your site via proxy as well. You should also IP ban anonymizers (http://anonymouse.com and http://hidemyass.com are the only ones I know of that work properly). You can also try browsing HideMyAss's proxy list and IP banning all of the IP addresses there.

[Thrik]

Keep your forums limited and your patience unlimited.

 

With Razputin's Domain for example I originally had just the one forum which served as a catch-all for pretty much everything. It served as an off-topic, on-topic, whatever. Things went pretty slowly for about four months, but people started to notice as this one forum grew in posts and more decided to join in. I gradually added new forums as a clear need for them became apparent.

 

The easiest way to dissuade someone from joining your forum is if they have a look at the front page and see about six forums with 30 posts in each instead of just one forum with 180 posts. It's very simple psychology, but it makes a surprising difference. If you can get away with it, just go with one or two forums to start off with.

 

Other than that, you'll learn with experience I guess. Always try to listen to your member's needs, but never beckon to all of them. Some people just want excessively big avatars and such for themselves, while others may mean well and recommend that you do X and Y to boost your forum popularity, but in reality it's probably not such a good idea. Basically, always engage common sense. Would you find X and Y appealing on some other forum?

 

And good luck!

[Joshi]

Democracy doesn't work in a forum, no matter how much you'd like it to. Forum polls about trivial issue to do with the forum are okay, but never give the members the feeling that they have any power over you, on the internet, only dictatorship works and that's the plain truth of things. You own the forum, don't let others think otherwise or you will have a failure.

 

That's not to say you ignore your members opinions totally, but when it comes to mass voting, you'll find the majority of your members are newbs.

[James Isaac]

You may want to install a custom skin for your board (I see you're running phpBB so check out http://www.phpbb.com or http://www.phpbbhacks.com for some skins). It's pretty easy to do and adds some variety to your forums, as I've seen so many phpBB forums using the subSilver template I'm getting really sick of it now . Although, if you're planning on installing mods to the board don't bother with multiple skins, as it just becomes a pain when you have to install the mod on each skin.