Overland Sailor - 17 January 2007 09:10 AM

The site looks great!  I’m jealous to say the least. 

When it comes to site promotion, I’ve had solid success promoting my community site with business cards.  I go to every public meeting and event I possibly can.  While there a discussion about the site always seems to come up with someone and before you know it people are asking for information about it.  A Business card is a simple way to put the address in peoples hands and adds a touch of credibility with some folks (for whatever reason).

As far as forum software goes my experience is limited to InvisionFree.  It is limited in some ways, and it is hosted which makes combining it with other projects difficult but it is completely free (it’s funded by a google ad bar on the site) and has reasonable controls that allow you to manage problem users and the like.  For the record, I am not connected to InvisionFree in anyway, I just happen to like it (at least until I find something better).

When it comes to promoting active participation at a forum there is only one way I know of to do that.  You need to get a few friends together and talk, talk, talk, talk, oh, and talk on the site.  People rarely want to be the first to participate (and only about 1 in 10 who visit a forum will ever participate) so being active on the site with your friends and family (even to the point it feels a bit repetitive) is the way to go.  Another benefit you get from creating active topics that could potentially draw new people into the discussion is that your posts with friends help set the tone of the site.  A site full of discussion, all without foul language or personal attacks will do more to teach new users how to act than any effort to display rules and the like.

For an example of forum success check out America’s Debate.  According to the site’s founders they started a few years back with just themselves and a handful of friends talking about mostly national political issues daily.  Now they have over 3000 registered members and something like 13,000 or more topics.

Hey what happened to every one no response yet????