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Selecting a Good Forum Niche
Choosing the topic of your forum is an important decision. If you have your boards centered around a topic no one wants to talk about, no one will talk about it. There are two things that should be focused on when deciding if your forum niche is appropriate - if you want to talk about it and if others want to talk about it. You need both.
Choose a Discussable Topic
Your topic should be on that can be talked about. You have to be careful not to choose a topic that’s too saturated. If you choose a popular topic, it will be difficult for you to make your forum more appealing that the bigger ones. You’ll have to work much harder, in this case. “you should aim for a niche that’s specific, but not too specific. For example, poetry my be more specific than writing, and thus a good topic; however, Shakespearian poetry is probably too specific. People have to want to talk about your topic. Make sure your topic is not obscure - discussing an unpopular book or creating a forum for the Amish probably won’t generate much activity. :p
Choose a Niche you Enjoy
While still important, choosing a topic you enjoy is still something you should consider. One must enjoy the topic and be knowledgeable in it. Creating a forum, blog, or other website you know nothing about is foolish. You have to personally want to talk about it. Oftentimes, the administrator who runs the forum runs forums on topics they’re passionate about. If you don’t intend to be active in your community, choosing a topic you like isn’t all that important. However, it certainly aids in a forum’s early days and in creating a community.
The Apathetic Administrator
Is that you? Do you care what happens on your forums? An apathetic administrator isn’t a good administrator, that much is for certain. Forums put out what is put into them. If you don’t post, enforce rules, or improve your forum, you should find a new hobby.
In my previous post, I expressed how important it is for the forum owner to personally post. I would like to stress this yet again - it’s vital. The form owner should post daily and should actively be promoting his forum.
Rules are important in any forum. IF you don’t have a set of boundaries, you can’t fairly punish or ban users when they do something you didn’t like, because you didn’t tell them it was wrong to do. A set of rules tell the members what they can and can’t do. If you let them do what they want, you’re going to have frequent pissing matches. Moreover, no rules basically tell the users its okay to spam, curse, and display adult content.
If you care about your forum, you’ll actively be trying to find new ways to improve it. I make improvements to my forum almost daily - major upgrades every three or four months. I think the feeling that the administrator is actively improving the forums shows the users that the administrator cares - and an admin who cares about the forum is the type of admin that most users desire. In addition to this, constant improvements can also give you an edge on the competition, providing they don’t copy you, which can prove invaluable.
To summarize, be active, have rules, and improve your forum. Doing this shows you care as the forum owner. If you don’t care about your forum, success is unlikely.
The Importance of Having a Unique Forum Design
The #1 thing that will cause your forum to fail is having a poor design. This is the general consensus, and I’m just reinforcing - it’s true. It has been said that internet users will determine if they’ll stay on or leave your site in less than a second. Because of this, it is increasingly important to have a high-quality and user-friendly design. If you don’t make an impression within the first few seconds you’ve lost that user forever. If your potential members hear fantastic things about your site, it doesn’t matter whatsoever if your site’s look simply, well, sucks. The following are a few basic things that should be considered when thinking about the layout and look of your forum:
General Design
- The actual look, feel, and design of your forum should look clean and professional. Make the look something a large number of users will enjoy instead of the minority. There isn’t anything specific I’d like to pinpoint in regard to this design that isn’t otherwise covered in this post, but overall the general colors and layout of your forum are very important - perhaps the most important. The layout has to be easy to navigate and not straining on the eyes.
Clutter
- Having unnecessary banners and snippets of information might be useful, but it makes your site look bad. This is simply a fact. The cleaner and clearer the site, the more user friendly it will be. Users like designs that are simple. Every additional link, image, and advertisement you have is something that has potential to annoy your user. This is why I discourage the use of large signatures and signatures that have images in them: placing images in signatures litter your forum with unnecessary and distracting images that may upset may potential (and existing) users.
Advertisements
- No one likes ads, but they’re oftentimes necessary to run the site or to make a profit. However, from a user’s point-of-view, the fewer advertisements the better. Moreover, ads should be integrated, yet not intrusive. This is a difficult combination. You want the ads to be effective and get a decent CTR, but you don’t want the users to be significantly distracted or annoyed by them. You want the primary focus of your forum to be on the content posted and on user posting new, additional content. I’ll be making a more detailed post in a few days about the dos and don’ts of advertising on a forum.
But what kind of theme should you get? Should you use a free theme, buy one, make design your own, or purchase an exclusive one? Good themes are rarely free and themes won’t make themselves.
Scratch the Default Theme
While the default themes of most forum software companies are actually good, the fact that every user who uses the software has access to it should be a warning. There are tens of thousands of forums (if not more) on the internet today, and each and every one of those at one point was using a default theme. It’s likely there are still thens of thousands that currently use it today. Using a default theme does nothing to brand your site or make it stand out. It confines you; it makes your forum just another forum. Chances are that more than 50% of users have seen the theme before. This can confuse the users. Moreover, while a default theme is typically well designed, they’re still a long way from fantastic.
Stock and Paid Themes: You’re Getting Warmer
The next step up the totem pole of style is to use a free stock template or buy a better stock skin. While this is certainly better than using the default, it’s still not good enough if you’re serious about being successful. It works for a few, but all the major successful forums are using custom themes or modified default ones. Stock templates make your site look better, but not quite unique. If it’s available elsewhere, chances are it’s used elsewhere. If the theme is used elsewhere, that means users may have seen it elsewhere; if it’s been seen elsewhere, users get confused and annoyed. If you must use a stock template I strongly suggest you customize it to your site; change the colors, give it a custom header, new icons, and other things to make your site different from the original.
Get a Customized Unique Theme
I honestly believe the best thing you can do for your discussion board is to purchase a custom theme. Ideally, if you’re both a good designer and coder, you could do this yourself. However, this isn’t practical for many forum administrators. Usually you can get a high quality, custom theme for under $300. I’ve paid around $200 for mine and am quite satisfied. I don’t recommend you ever pay more than $500 for a theme, unless, of course, you can afford it and think it’s worth it. See my recommended page for some good designers and coders.