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Category: Big Board Discussions
How did you get your forum to where it is?

Hopefully this is a allowed.

List your forum and it's statistics (Total, Daily posts, Members, URL, Etc) and desribe how you got there. What kind of advertising methods you used, what you offered as a service, content, etc. I'm curious to see how other forums that are larged then mine got to where they are today. I really haven't done anything to get it off the ground which is why my forum is not as active after 3 years.

My stats are posted in some of the other threads here but the bottom line is this... Non-stop hard work... Sweat and some tears. Never give up..

This is not directed at you or anyone in particular but a lot of forums fail to really take off because people are not 110% determined and involved. I think one of the largest forum misconceptions is that if you build it people will come. Only in the rarest case does that happen in the earlier years when there were no others out there.

In the 4+ plus years my largest forum has been around I have dedicated countless hours of my time, money and sanity to seeing it take flight.

You know what I find frustrating? When people go elsewhere and diss you and your site and say what a waste of money it is. Hi, my money, my board, my problem - if you wanna run off and be a brat about it, go for it, ya know?

12,000 members (over, but I've deleted a bunch), anywhere between 400-600 on a day, anywhere from 50-200 on at one given time (I think our most online was 400 or a little less), an average of 700 posts per day and an average of 50 new threads a day.

I also have a shoutbox that's pretty popular and I'm not sure if it's counting posts that don't go toward post count. If that's the case my averages are higher.

Blah, sorry I'm frustrated with my board at the moment.

I advertised everyone. I have a lot of affiliates, I'm listed a couple official sites for my topic so that always helps. Work. HARD. FRIGGIN. WORK. Checking it constantly, trying to come up with new ideas and ignoring the haters.

Ashley,
I feel for you. I actually have about 3 "new" hater communities that live to bash us and think they can do it better - though they have been learning the hard way it isn't easy. The vast majority of their members have been banned from our site over the years after multiple incidents against other members. Most of them don't like our "rules", especially when it gets in the way of their "fun" and abusiveness to others. They are basic forum trash, and unfortunately I have learned hard lessons that there just isn't enough hours in the day to hold their hands, so we do a lot more banning and less counseling. Fortunately, their numbers are well under 1/10th of 1 percent of those that come to our community.

It used to get me very upset to see people smearing both my good name and that of a community I/We worked so hard to build, but in the end paying attention to these problematics will only cause you pain and waste time you could be putting to more constructive use - making your community better.

The best thing you can do is ignore them and never mention them at your own community. If they are slamming or flaming you elsewhere, it actually turns off good members that may visit that site. It backfired on most of the hater-boards that tried this with us.

Frustration is part of being a site admin/owner, but hang in there. The hard work pays off. :) And your determination to find new ideas will help ensure that as well.

PS. I don't know of any shoutbox that adds to the post count of your site, and chances are the content won't be indexed either. After looking at that plus the time used dealing with some people that wanted to use it for their own nefarious purposes, we got rid of it and we did see a slight increase in post statistics during that time.

You hit the nail on the head FlyBoy. Forum trash! It's not even worth it to deal with them. No matter whether I let them stay or ban they're going to bash me around their little world. I wonder if they realize what a waste of their time it is...and beyond that that it gets people curious about my site. The only time it's pathetic is when it's someone who claims on my site to love it and then trashes it. That bugs me.

I don't let things bother me for very long and I don't hold grudges like these people. I had an old mod that caused problems people still fume and complain about which I find as asinine as their grudges.

Ah well, I think your site is great if it makes you feel any better and great that you're doing it. Just goes to show you that we Texans really ARE smart ;)










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