Staff Member Etiquette
While staff members are a needed part of the forum hierarchy, it is adviseable to NOT choose the route of nepotism, and instead choose the route of ability. Do not make your friends moderators or administrators simply because they are your friends. Choose people you can trust, and that will do the job properly. Staff members are expected to maintain a higher standard of posting and behavior than regular members, and as such, it is proper to require certain personality aspects that can command a users' attention. This applies also to yourself as an administrator. If you plan to take your forums seriously, you must also keep yourself at a higher standard of behavior than the members you serve (and that is important to keep in mind also, you serve the members, they do not serve you). In so saying, do not do anything that would give off the appearance of being too immature for the position. This includes boosting your postcount to reflect an inaccurate number of posts (especially a number higher than the actual postcount of the forum), and imposing rules that are outlandish, or entirely irrelevant for a startup board. Keep it simple, but at the same time "professional," and you'll be fine.
Staff Forums: Hide The m
Another issue related to staff members is that of the Staff forums. When creating staff forums, always keep in mind that timeless phrase "Out of sight, out of mind." As is the case here -- keep any and all staff forums hidden from view, as it is generally unacceptable to see them flaunted about in front of members. Yes, permissions allow you to privatize forums whilst still showing them on the forum list; however, this is not an acceptable procedure, and they should be hidden so that members cannot see that they are there. Thus, they are out of mind.
Content
This stems back to "The Promise." Don't create GW copies and think you'll be successful. *Site* has been successful because Al got started early in the game and worked his way up towards being one of the best. There's no need to copy *Site*, as we're still right here! If you don't like the ruleset, that's fine, but making a copy of the forums isn't going to get you anywhere. *Site* has survived literally thousands of "we're better than GW" clones, and is still going strong. What makes you think your copy will be better? To be successful in this day and age of internet forums, you need to have original content, or find a niche with a relatively small outlet of meeting places. Gaming's overdone now, so the chances that you'll create a successful gaming forum in today's internet are slim to none. So please, use original content, don't try and copy *Site*, and don't make outlandish claims.
Guests and Logging In: Total blocking is a no-no!
Another trend on the rise lately is blocking guests from viewing a board until they've registered. Not only is this the easiest way to discourage guests from ever returning to your forums, it's also downright stupid if you're just starting out. You see, a guest wants to decide for his/herself whether or not s/he wants to join your forums based on what they see right off the bat. If all they get is a "registered members only" sign, they won't want to return at all. If a guest has access to view the boards (with or without guest posting enabled), they then have the ability to scout the boards out and decide if this is a place they really want to be. If they do, they'll register; if they don't, they won't. Blocking is a surefire way to get rid of guests for good, but do you really want to risk loosing so many potential members?
What Hosting/Forum Solutions Are For Me?
This is a fantastic question that deserves an in-depth answer. Simply put, however, it depends on how serious you want to take your forums, and how much money you're willing to spend to get your forums where you want to go. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Well, it truly is that simple, if you have the drive to make your forum one of the best, then you've got to have the patience and the resources to back up that drive. In today's bulletin board world, it's not always easy or cheap to create and operate a successful board, so your drive is what's going to be the determining factor.
How Far Do You Want To Take It? A Guide to Proper Solutions for Your Forum
Free Hosting/Free Forums (Remotely Hosted Forums, for those who just want a start)
If you're either looking to just get your feet wet in the forum world, or you're looking to go the free hosting/free forum route (typically less successful than the paid route), you're going to want to go with a remotely hosted solution. Remotely hosted solutions are sites that provide you with pre-installed copies of bulletin boards that you can monitor with relative ease. If this sounds like your thing, a few sites that could be mentioned include:
InvisionFree (Switching to ZetaBoards)
ProBoards
Runboard
ezBoard (Moving to Yuku)
Forumer
Paid Hosting/Free Forums (For those with a bit more drive)
If you're willing to put a little time and effort into your forums, but don't want to spend too much money, you'll want to go with the paid hosting/free forums route. This means that you get a proper webhost (free hosts are severely limited, so you're better going with a paid host), and installing free forum software (not typically as good or unrestricted as paid software), which could include:
phpBB
QuickSilver Forums
PunBB (Now Forked into FluxBB)
OpenBB
MyBB
FUD Forums
Paid Hosting/Paid Forums (For those who really want to take their forums seriously)
If you've really got the drive to take your forums the distance, you're going to want to snag yourself a whopper of a host, and a great forum script. The best forum scripts usually cost a pretty penny (regardless of what others say, when it comes to forum development, you get what you pay for), however, in the long run, the startup costs are usually a small price to pay with the proper drive. The best examples of paid forum software are:
vBulletin
Invision Power Board
IdealBB
