[Hidden-tech] Setting up a web forum--request for advice

[Sheldon F. Finlay]

Hello Shel,

I have installed/setup/moderated many forums using a variety of forum 
softwares. Among my favorites are: PHPbb (www.phpbb.com), Phorum 
(www.phorum.org), Invision Board (www.invisionboard.com), vBulletin 
(www.vbulletin.com). I tend to lean strongly towards PHPbb. It is 
non-commercial software and has a very large community of developers 
whom contribute mods and addons which are useful for adding additional 
features to a forum.

* What features are essential *

 - forum priveleges. You want to be able to control who posts to your 
forum. Most forums can be configured so only registered users can post 
messages which is ideal.  Any visitor can read posts, but if they decide 
to post they must create an account. This is helpful to prevent people 
from spamming your forum and gives you the ability to moderate any users 
who might be abusing your forum.

- Search Features. Allow visitors to search the archives.

- User profiles and signatures. If you want your forum to establish a 
sense of community it is nice to allow members to create profiles 
(location, interest, web site, etc.).

- Security. Forums are often subseptible to security exploits. In fact, 
PHPbb recently had a pretty major security flaw which cause many forums 
to be defaced (and worse). There is still a worm floating around the 
Internet attempting to infect insecure installations of PHPbb. So it is 
important to keep your forum software up to date.

- Privacy. Most forum software will allow you to hide the email address 
of members in order to prevent spammers from harvesting email addresses 
from your forum. Fortunately, most software will still allow people to 
send email and private messages to each other via the forum without ever 
making the email address of the members known.

- Auto-notification of new posts or replies. A member can subscribe to a 
forum or a particular thread and be emailed anytime a new post is made. 
It's a good way to keep the discussion moving.

* How moderated to they have to be *

Forum privledges, as mentioned above, are the 1st line of defense in forum moderation. As the forum owner you will have administrative priveledges which means you can browse through your forum and easily move posts, lock posts, and delete posts. You can also ban troublesome users (although they can always come back using a different email address). If you have users on your forum whom you trust you can upgrade them to moderator status and have them assist in the moderation of the forum.

* Anything else you think might be useful

Probably the hardest part of a forum is establishing the community. It is very difficult to get the forum to a point where it reaches a critial mass of users and posts. In the beginning you'll have to spend a lot of time answering every post promptly and keeping the dialog going. But if you keep at it, eventually the forum will become it own entity and a thriving community will florish.

I hope this is helpful.

Good Luck!


Sheldon F. Finlay
----------------------------------------------------------
Outer Limits Media, Inc.
 
sheldon at outerlimitsmedia.com
http://www.outerlimitsmedia.com
Phone: 413.253.0051
Fax:     413.425.6423



Shel Horowitz wrote:

> I'm thinking of offering forums to my visitors (I've also finally gone 
> and set up a blog). since my discussion group experience is almost 
> entirely in e-mail lists, I'd appreciate any advice on
> * What features are essential
> * How moderated to they have to be (and what's the procedure)
> * Anything else you think might be useful
>
> Thanks!


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