How to create a forum for a site setup

Adding a forum to your site is a great way to promote a sense of community around your site.

An effective forum can your visitors with a good impression of your site and your business, and it can also be the House discussions, lively and useful information hard to find. Set up a Forum takes a long time and it is easy to do if you follow the instructions. There are many applications of paid and free online forum. Difficulty: average

Instructions

1. 1

   Choose a theme for the site.

It is obvious that the issue be the theme of your site is about, but be careful, select a topic that is too broad. A good idea would be your a forum about football in the County, while a general football Forum is set to compete with the established sites.

2

Choose a platform for the Forum.

Have two main options: hosting the Forum on your own server or use a hosted forum Builder service. Advice was big message boards statistics, "vBulletin" far outside of the most popular software forum with an active developer community and many features and templates. The next two are far behind "Invision" and "PhpBB" trail. In the category of hosted forums "Forumotion" can free hosted forums with upgrade options to create. Ultimately your decision will be notified by the platform of your existing website.

3

Configure and install the platform.

When you create a hosted solution, an account and become familiar with the Admin Panel. For even hosted TV solution files download and upload to the server via FTP. Create a database of "MySQL" before installing the files. After the database is created, restart the installation process by accessing the installation screen.

4

Choose a name for the Forum and the URL.

The name should be some Chosemémorable - steer disable of the special characters that make it difficult, who could find website. If you are hosting your own forum, set the URL as "yourdomainname.com/forum." If the Forum is hosted elsewhere, consider purchasing a new name as "yourdomainnameforum.com" domain

5

Choose a theme and logo.

The topic must closely match your existing website and find a designer that can create a seamless theme but were not afraid to have some differences in the design of the website and Forum as long as you are not too far away.

6

Assign categories and forums.

In the first days of your forum you must maintain the minimum categories, otherwise will give you the impression that the Forum is empty. It is not necessary to create a category for each subtopic, you can create easily new categories if crowded your Commission be.

7

Start posting and keep posting regularly.

Expect visitors who start display with an empty Board, it is your responsibility to get the debate. Expect several months try to build momentum to spend.

8

Monitor and lively to the contents of spam to keep abuse and illegal off the coast of your forum.

View, create a category called "Miscellaneous" to categorize on the subject, but jedemES merits threads.