Hello everyone, you may have thought about opening your own community in the past, or will in the future, this is a general guide of how to open up your own forum community.

Common Forum Types

There are endless amounts of forum systems out there, but I will be outlining a few for you to look at.

Free Forums

Phpbb- phpbb is an open source board that has been around since around 2000. I highly recommend phpbb to people new into the forum “scene.” It has an endless amount of free mods and themes to fit your any need, and a very easy-to-use admin system. For more info on phpbb, visit their site [here].

Simple Machine Forum- SMF is a free board that doesn’t need a lot of resources to host. It is very friendly towards coding, so you can code your own mods for the board if you can’t find a mod you want out of the huge selection. There is an easy-to-use theme builder built into the forums as well. For more info on SMF, visit their website [here].

Paid Forums

IPB- Invision Power Board Is one of the two most used paid forums. There are loads of free and premium skins, mods, and resources around for IPB. IPB also features a great, easy-to-use system for the users, and a easy-to-use admin panel. For more information on Invision Power Board, visit their website [here].

Vbulletin- Vbulletin is the other main premium forum used other than IPB. Vbulleton has loads of mods and themes available for use with the forum. Vbulleton is unique in which they set up the admin panel, they have it organized differently then most of the forums out there. Overall, it is a great forum, for more information on VB, visit their website [here].

Finding your Niche

This is one of the hard parts you will run into when making a community. When making your community, you want it to stand out from the others in a market that isn’t overrun with forums on the subject. You must pick something that you are knowledgeable in and can provide unique, quality content on.

Advertising

Advertising plays a big role when making a website. When buying advertisements, I would stick to places that have a page rank of at least 2-3 so your links are valued by Google. You should also advertise on website related to your niche. If you properly market and advertise your community, you will find yourself succeeding.

As you may tell, I have lined up a few tips for you to follow when making a community, If you would like me to write into further detail, just get ahold of me.

Thanks,

Daniel Johnston