Faux Pas
- Colour Scheme and Overal Presentation
- Number of Posts:Forums Ratio
- Forum Rules
- "The Promise"
- Staff Members
- Content
- Guests and Logging In: Total blocking is a no-no!
- What Hosting/Forum Solutions Are for Me?
Colour Scheme and Overall Presentation
This is a different age on the internet than it was a couple of years back. In a time in which there are hundreds, even thousands of forums for each niche to find a home in, colour schemes are taking on a more prominent role as a deciding factor in whether or not guests stay to post, or go elsewhere. The biggest problems we see with today's colour schemes include: sticking with the default scheme or throwing together a disgusting/blinding scheme that should never have seen the face of the internet.
We'll start with the default. While using the default skin isn't all that bad, it does detract from the originality of your forums. It shows that you put next-to-no effort into your forums layout, and could infer that you don't care about brining in new posters. Invision Board, phpBB, vBulletin, they all give you a fantastic default layout, but take it one step further and customize it! The default style has been used so much by so many sites that it's cliche these days. A simple colour change is not that hard to achieve, and can improve the look of your forums ten-fold.
That being said, we'll move on to the next problem with Faux Pas Number 1; the completely unattractive and blinding colour schemes. While turquoise/cyan might be a nice colour for word documents (and even that's a stretch), it does NOT work for a forum colour scheme. The same is true of lime green, blindingly bright pink, and other such colours. If you're looking for a light colour scheme, start with white and work your way towards the various shades of the colour you want to achieve. Learning Hex code values is a great way to achieve a good colour scheme, and it's fairly straight-forward. Once you know your Hex codes, it's time to learn what colours mesh well together, and what colours are absolutely blinding to the eyes (the colours mentioned early, for example). The best way to do this is to mix & match, then ask someone whether or not it looks ok. Take hints from other websites if need be (DO NOT COPY!), but use caution, as you never know what's going to work for you. Just please, please, avoid the cyan, lime green, and pink designs.
Number of Posts:Forums ratio
Forum Faux Pas Number Two is fairly straight-forward, yet it's something that's been seen a lot in newer forums. When you're starting out with a new forum, there is absolutely NO reason to create hundreds upon hundreds of forums if you don't have the members to fill them. What you do is start small, and expand as you gain the activity. Let's use the biggest niche we see here in the GW advertising forum and go with gaming as an example. When you're starting out your forums, there is NO need to create game-specific forums until the need for them arrises. Instead, create console forums and let the conversation stay there. Once a certain game starts to overrun the forum, create a forum for it, and so-on. It's a fairly simple concept that doesn't need to be abused.
Another part to this Faux Pas include the use of similar forums where they aren't needed. For instance, having a "Lounge/Chat" forum, and a "Random/Spam" forum. They're one in the same, and they don't need to be there when you're starting out. It looks tacky to have forums like that, and
spreading posts over too many forums gives off the appearance of inactivity, regardless of how active your forums may be. Keep it to a reasonable level, and you'll be fine.
Forum Rules
Ah, the ruleset. Big problems have been coming from newer forums when it comes to the creation of a ruleset. The thing I'm seeing the most are GW Copies. *Site*' ruleset is *Site*' ruleset, it is not yours to take, and it should not appear on forums outside of *Site*. I've noticed flat-out copy/pastes of the ruleset, copy/change a few words/pastes of the ruleset, and paraphrasing using similar verbage of the ruleset. Let me lay this out clearly for your new forum owners out there: You do not want a GW-like ruleset on a small board. It will not work! *Site* has a relatively strict ruleset because it is a large board with lots of members. More defined rules are always needed as newer members tend to need harsher punishments to understand that rules are there to keep a general pace within the forums, and to keep idiotic/useless/disruptive content out of the forums.
