How to Make Your Own Forum

Love of communication.

The words above are so simple yet are so true. Do you like Forums, and have thoughts of making your own?

1. Think. I know what your saying. WOW unbelievable he just said think. Hang on “Romeo”. First things first. You need to think of the type of forum you want to create. The most popular ones I have seen are from  Gamer community. But to be successful and have users that actually post something, you need to not just like the subject matter but know where to find your users/members.

1.2- So On the subject of where to find users. If you are a gamer and play a specific game, get people from that community. If your a writer find some writers with some passion. If your a movie fan like Me then read my example below…

For Example. I have been a long term member of an online Movie site. I have lots of acquaintances and friends from there. Well one month our “ruler” was banning people like crazy. I “says to myself” I dont want people to leave there my friends. So I created a forum for all past, present and future members of the site. Ha! The point is, before I made it or went through with I knew what I was trying to accomplish.

 
Source of Image

So THINK!!

2. Now that you have what you are trying to create and where to find the members, the next part is finding a good “host” company.

The importance of this is quit a bit: since some Control panels you have no Idea whats going on. Some lose your content through glitches in there server. Others simply have nothing to offer.

I would suggest www.forumotion.com.

They make it so easy for you to do what you are trying to do. Without writing any code/HTML. BUT if you do know some HTML they allow you access into that part of the control panel. Another great part of forumotion is that they have people that submit Templates/Themes that can take it to whole new level. Making it look stylish or “cool”.

Above you can see this small thumbnail picture. This is my forum. Notice the theme that I incorporated. I didnt make that and neither do you. BUT if there is something you dont like about it Forumotion lets you edit every single part of it. To make it look exactly like you want it to.

The biggest part of their service is there ease of control. Everything is really laid out for you. With some descriptions and help icons. They already have an extensive Avatar gallery that you can add to or just let your users find there own.

Oh did I mention its Free. (with buyable options) You buy credits and use those to get things for your forum.

Do not worry about that since you dont have to. I never have. But it does allow you to buy your own Domain name.

Other than forumotion just google make your own forum. There are plenty others out there. I would never tell you that there is not another great Host site for forums.

Now once you have registered (somewhere) you need to figure out what kind of topics I want.

Topics are the central theme of certain “categories” in your forum.

for instance– You will have a Topic then underneath that a Thread then underneath that a Post.

You create the Topics anyone makes the Threads and anyone makes Posts.

These are the most common forum terminology I have come across.

Now these few things should keep you busy. Dont forget to update your forum a lot. With new user updates and the like. Make it interesting.

So go! Make your forum, but hey have some fun eh?