Popularity

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

enttymaul
Forum Newbie
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:51 am
Location: Titan

Popularity

Post by enttymaul »

hey guys, i am new here and i have my own php forum( no where near as good as this) i was just looking at the number of members and articles and i am amazed, i know you guys are proffesionals but it's still a pretty damn good achievement. well my forum seems like a shrimp compared to yours and i was wonderin how you guys came to recieve so many members, maybe its all the effort you guys put in but yet i am only 13 and i only have 50 members and 503 articles and its only been a fortnight but i hope you guys can help me out on this, thanks. oh, and do you ever get people who sign up and never post? because we DO have 50 members but 5 only seem to be active.
User avatar
n00b Saibot
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1452
Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2004 2:59 am
Location: Lucknow, UP, India
Contact:

Post by n00b Saibot »

first of all, welcome :) I think the reason for a forum or any site to be very popular is first its content, second its admins/mods/members responses and thirdly its asthetics (i really hate sitepoint with all that ads :evil:) Search Google - this forum has pretty damn good ranking there... and I'll bet my life there isn't any good forum like this for miles in sight :D but it has got effort of Site Admins and Mods going behind it that have granted it such popularity and repute among PHP masses... particulary I'd like to mention feyd. it's shame you weren't here when feyd was on his rise. his lightning fast responses didn't give a second to wait :) His response times were always around 1 minute :D So that takes some work, buddy...

and BTW, not all members are the contributors, some go into hibernation, some just watch before the get confident enough to post :wink:
foobar
Forum Regular
Posts: 613
Joined: Wed Sep 28, 2005 10:08 am

Post by foobar »

There are loads of users what don't contribute on any forum. Just check their memberlist & sort it according to postcount in ascending order:

memberlist.php?mode=posts&order=ASC

It's difficult to get a lot of users to post on a forum. You're going to have to offer something that isn't offered anywhere else. Forums are very competitive these days, simply because of their abundance. Just take it nice and slowly. Unless you have a site/product that already has a large devoted user base, setting up a successful forum will be difficult. Most forums only reach popularity after a few years. So don't worry about it. 50 users is still a lot of people!
enttymaul
Forum Newbie
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:51 am
Location: Titan

Post by enttymaul »

i agree, good forums are hard to come by. i find it hard to find good friends that would be glad to help me on my forum, this is because i am more mature than most of the yr 8's in my school, i feel that they act like 2 yr olds and they should really grow up and face reality but i guess i am just different. if anyone one like to aid me in increasing the popularity of my forum, please email me at entitymaul@hotmail.com and give me these details:

name:
age:
gander:
occupation:
experience in forums:
reason for wanting to become a moderator or administrotor

or if you want and easier way, heres a link to my forum http://enter-thedarkside.tk
User avatar
feyd
Neighborhood Spidermoddy
Posts: 31559
Joined: Mon Mar 29, 2004 3:24 pm
Location: Bothell, Washington, USA

Post by feyd »

Ahh, to be called out in brown nosing fashion in a thread.. :lol: j/k

The major thing for most is providing excellent content and delivering what people want. It takes a lot of time if the site doesn't provide something unique. If you have something unique, that will often bring in a lot of people to look around. Some will stay, others may return, and some will not. It's hard to tell how many would of each because of so many variables in the equation. At any rate, good luck with your endevour.



Moved to General Discussion.
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Post by onion2k »

Next time we do one of those member award vote things can we have a "Most vile signature" award. I want to nominate someone. ;)
josh
DevNet Master
Posts: 4872
Joined: Wed Feb 11, 2004 3:23 pm
Location: Palm beach, Florida

Post by josh »

It's normal for people to signup and never do anything, on any site. One of my web sites is going on 5,000 members and the forums had about 10 posts total before I closed them down.
Grim...
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1445
Joined: Tue May 18, 2004 5:32 am
Location: London, UK

Re: Popularity

Post by Grim... »

enttymaul wrote:...i was wonderin how you guys came to recieve so many members...
It's because I post here.

Obviously.
alvinphp
Forum Contributor
Posts: 380
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:47 am

Post by alvinphp »

I had a forum getting about 10k posts a day and I found the biggest way to keep the activity up is to keep updating the site with new content. As soon as I stopped adding content the site traffic would drop, however when I started adding again the traffic popped back up. I have not made any change to the site in over a year (been busy) so the traffic is dropped a lot, but the site still has a good following.

Having good mods is also pretty important as people will leave/join because of them. My view was more mods the better as someone was always watching the site. The downside was sometimes you get mods that over modded and it would get sticky as these mods are helping you for free so you want to give them a certain level of freedom.
User avatar
s.dot
Tranquility In Moderation
Posts: 5001
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2005 7:18 pm
Location: Indiana

Post by s.dot »

Marketing, no doubt, is my toughest area. You just gotta stick it out.. don't get discouraged if you only get 5 members a month, but also don't get too excited if you get 50 members in a month. Moderation is key, show your members that you're in it for the long run, and they'll go to respect that and know your site is going to be there if they decide to come back.
Set Search Time - A google chrome extension. When you search only results from the past year (or set time period) are displayed. Helps tremendously when using new technologies to avoid outdated results.
Deemo
Forum Contributor
Posts: 418
Joined: Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:48 am
Location: Washington DC

Post by Deemo »

something that helps alot if also the domain name. For example, I was looking for a good halflife2 forum, so i tried halflife2.com. halflife2.com is a marketting sky, so i tried halflife2.net. that was a forum, and now im a member there. having a memorable or easy domain name will likely get people who have no idea what they are looking for, and stumble along your site.

Also, make sure you have lots of keywords for google. for example, you search PHP forum, and phpdn is the 3rd one.
enttymaul
Forum Newbie
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:51 am
Location: Titan

Post by enttymaul »

thanks for the helpguys, ill tell you's all if anything happens but i will still be on this forum regularly
nincha
Forum Contributor
Posts: 191
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2003 12:30 pm
Location: CA, USA

Post by nincha »

and im an idiot that post random unrelated things!!! beside this post.
enttymaul
Forum Newbie
Posts: 12
Joined: Wed Nov 09, 2005 5:51 am
Location: Titan

Post by enttymaul »

i hve a question and anyone can answer due to their opinion. what is your favourite subject to discuss about? i need help with content.
Grim...
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1445
Joined: Tue May 18, 2004 5:32 am
Location: London, UK

Post by Grim... »

Women
Cars
Myself
Computer Games


Possibly in that order.
Post Reply