Running a Forum

[Dangermouse]

For the last two years my club has discussed having a Forum as a way of keeping in touch and as a one stop shop for all news and events that are happening.
Our man who knows most about these things keeps on referring to expense and the difficulties involved etc

Can I ask the Founding members how much time it takes to keep the Forum running and have they had to put much finance into Full Bore UK?

As the Forum that my club would set up, if they ever got around to it, would be a closed site, there would be no possibilities of attracting any advertising, so I would be interested to hear if it is a costly activity - our bursar feels that it would be.

I would fully support any small money making scheme that the Full Bore UK founding members felt appropriate to offset the costs - as long as we don't have flashing adverts all over the forum!

On the subject of advertisements on Forums, I have to laugh at another Forum that I visit which is aimed at F Class shooters, I regularly see advertisements on that site for dating sites - I can not imagine that we are their target market.

DM

[Christel]

As this forum gets older I am more and more convinced that no adverts is the way to stay.

I am sure I am speaking for many of the forum members when I say we like it this way.

DM, I think the situation you are describing is more like the one Mike357 went through. Local club website and forum closed to non members.

Mike357, you around?

[ovenpaa]

I agree that banners are not the way to go and nor is forum sponsorship. This forum has no direct or indirect income and entry to the 'Vendors and Innovators' section is totally free, all that is asked is people post in it from time to time to wet the appetite of the forum membership.

Hopefully we can keep it this way. Cost wise is it is dependant on who you host with. We have registered the domain name full-bore.co.uk for two years and we have paid for five years forum hosting up front, we also pay for daily backups and payment for this is on a yearly basis. So we have 18 months before renewing the domain name.

Costs - not sure, I would have to look it up, right now we have a very competitive hosting deal but were they to feel unhappy about bandwidth they could bounce at any stage, this could happen at any time and could cost anywhere from GBP35/125 month so cross your fingers that does not happen any time soon!

Time wise, well we are lucky that we have two very good and diligent Mods to keep an eye on things plus Christel doing a lot in the back ground with the maintenance and running of the site, as an example spammers have been a significant issue for a while now and as a consequence new members now have to be approved by her. They have got in a couple of times and posted in such a way that a few legitimate posts had to be deleted before we could delete the offending ones (The original forum hoody thread was one) The other good thing is the forum as such is self moderating to a good degree which means people know when to stop, shake their heads and agree to disagree amicably. Something I would hate to see us loose.

Back to time - I think Christel and the Mods keep an eye on the forum 18 out of 24 hours per day.

[spud]

if you need any help in setting one us , give us a shout

[Dave 101]

Hi DM

I am sure in principal it sounds like a good idea to have a forum , my club has or had one not sure now because I was the only person whoever posted on it , honest not one person ever bothered to post anything .
The club had a website which was 2 years out of date then they had two websites with people arguing who was running the official club website , a farce .
Hope you have better luck .

Dave

[HeatherW762]

Hi DM

I am sure in principal it sounds like a good idea to have a forum , my club has or had one not sure now because I was the only person whoever posted on it , honest not one person ever bothered to post anything .
The club had a website which was 2 years out of date then they had two websites with people arguing who was running the official club website , a farce .
Hope you have better luck .

Dave

I was about to say the same about the forum one of my clubs runs. Apart from the initial interest, lasted about 2 weeks, absolutely nothing since!

Heather

[Dangermouse]

Thanks,
I think the writing is on the wall with this project,

DM

[ovenpaa]

Some stats for F-B(UK) for the first 6 months of 2011

Hits 4,557,239
Unique visitors 28,847
Pages viewed 1,529,949
Bandwidth used 43.55GB
It is interesting to see the different countries that visit us.

[Mike357]

The forum I set up for my club had a flurry of interest, about half the members joined, some posted stupid comments and then I was left to post stuff.

Be sure your audience are sufficiently computer literate and will participate. Forums live and die by the frequency and quality of their posts.

I am probably going to pull the forum in the next month or two.

If you just want to communicate with your membership then try a blog either with our without a closed membership, or don't allow people to post comments. Have a.look at ours VIA the web site.

Running a forum is sole destroying. Christel annd the mods do such a great job and the membership make this a great place.

[Mike357]

The web site I did myself and cost is under a fiver a month which I pay myself coz I'm nice like that. The web site, in 5 months has generated about 6 leads (£600 in fees if they join), enquiries re training and ballistic testing!

Web site and blog......yes.

Forum..........................no.