Archive Page 2

Featured Forum – Neo-Geo Forums

Published March 9, 2009 Featured Forum , Interviews 1 Comment
Tags: ,

Over the weekend, I had the chance to interview Bobak, one of the administrators of Neo-Geo Forums.  According to the forum ranking site, Big-Boards – by their sheer number of posts, Neo-Geo Forums is in the Top 1,000 forums on the web.  Neo-Geo (wikipedia article) is a classic console gaming system that was like having an arcade in your own home.  Talking to Bobak, brought back a bit of nostiliga of my early teen years.

Neo-Geo Stats:
* Threads: 181,034
* Posts: 2,539,134
* Members: 17,598
* Software: vBulletin v3.7.4

Bobak, as a Community Administrator on neo-geo.com, what do your tasks include?  (Same go for the other admins and Global Moderators).
The Administrators and Global Moderators of Neo-Geo.com have more-or-less the same tasks and authority.  Other than ridding the forum of the occasional spambot, our tasks are fairly simple: the general membership of Neo-Geo.com is intelligent and good at self-policing.  This has a lot to do with the culture of the forum, but I’ll get into the details of that aspect later.  In terms of Admin/Mod tasks, we do a lot of service requests from individual members: sometimes these involve administrative issues like account errors or moving threads placed in the wrong forum; every now and again it might be a dispute over personal or transactional issues that might warrant admin or moderator meditation.  On the whole, the moderators and administrators of Neo-Geo.com have collaborated to put into place rules that are easy to follow, and rarely require our actions to enforce.  We also sometimes collaborate on general site design, like realigning the sub-forum topics, and most of that is done after input and suggestions from the membership.  The actual line between administrator and global moderator is fuzzier than most forums: the handful of Admins do not press themselves on the other moderators, and global moderators have access to limited administrator-level tools on the forum.  We do have one Administrator, Mouse_Master, who handles all technical issues on the website.  The site has never needed many moderators or administrators to operate on a day-to-day basis, generally 2-3 on any given day is more than enough to handle any issues that come up.  Unlike some other forums, once a moderator becomes less active, we are unlikely to take away their access rights unless they do something truly harmful.  While these retired moderators may not be around often, we see no reason any putative measures. Over the years, the moderators and administrators work quite well together and are all on pretty much the same
page.  The admins and moderators actively participate in discussions.

I see Neo-Geo.com was started all the way back in Dec 1999.  That’s almost 10 years old!  Very impressive.  How long have you been involved and how have you seen the site evolve over the years?
The website itself dates back to 1999, but the forum didn’t arrive until August 2000.  Site owner/founder Shawn McCleskey became interested in the Neo Geo system in the late-1990s and jumped-in with passion.  In 1999, he was a part of a community that found itself on an old Yahoo! Club (DolphinLord SNK NeoGeo Domain); but the Yahoo system, which used a one-thread BBS, was straining badly with the number of members using it.  Shawn decided to add a forum to his own website, using a basic forum system (UBB when it started) and adapting the rules and concepts found on the Yahoo Club –I’ll explain that below.  At the time, I was a very active member of the Yahoo Club, but as fate would have it, Shawn actually started the Neo-Geo.com forum during a time where I was working on the road for a major  candidate in the 2000 Presidential Election.  As you may recall, that “election” ended in December 2000, and that’s when I got back to the hobby and noticed that everyone had migrated to Shawn’s excellent forum.  The original moderators were picked from the existing moderators of the Yahoo Club (including DolphinLord), and when one of the original four moderators retired, I was asked to step in and replace him in early 2001.  Since then I’ve been a global moderator, and later I was promoted to be a forum Administrator.

In terms of seeing the site evolve… wow.  That’s a long answer.  To speak generally, the site was born of an existing membership and culture that was wary of scams that were prevalent at the time of the forum’s founding in 2000.  The personality of the membership was decidedly anti-authoritarian and even a bit anarchic, but this actually worked well with Shawn’s own hands-off approach and desire to preserve a level of free speech that’s still very hard to find on the internet (without it degrading into something focused on trolling).  Starting from a position of some of the loosest rules possible, the forum has gradually tightened some rules only when the general function of the site was at risk.  Obviously, this upset some older members that were used to the rules at the beginning, or the type of discourse that may not have been beneficial to the site as a whole.  Basically, it became a series of fairly minor tweaks that kept the site as pleasing to as many old (and, more importantly, new) members as possible.  The site still actively welcomes dissenting views on everything from the state of SNK, the Neo Geo, to how the site is being run.  As the membership itself grew and developed into its own forum culture, its become quite good at policing itself and making it pleasant for anyone willing to become part of it.  The culture of the site is definitely a little sharper than a number of other niche video game forums: members are known to haze new members a bit, but the level of discussion remains intelligent and rewarding for those that find it a home.  This is a forum where you will find the moderators and admins getting into arguments with members on various subjects –we’ve been told this isn’t always the case.

As a side note, I actually wrote a brief history of some of the more crazy stories of site back in January 09, here it is:
http://www.neo-geo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2649189&postcount=9

Any plans for a 10th birthday party?
Actually, none at this time.  The time just passes so fast… I think this is partially because the site doesn’t actively try to make money: you’ve probably noticed we have absolutely no advertisements on the forum or general website.  The general Neo-Geo.com website is related to Shawn’s own NeoStore.com, but there are many members on the forum who don’t even realize that.

From looking at your members, I see both old and new members that are very active on the forum.  Other than Neo Geo conversations, do you think there is other reasons pulling this community together?
Oh, there’s absolutely more to do with the website than just Neo Geo talk.  It turns out that many of the members have similar interests in other video games, movies, sports, music or whatever.  The Unrelated Topics forum’s long been the most active forum on the website.  We were also unique when we started in that we had a “War Room” forum for channeling flame wars and allowing people to vent their more unconstructive ideas.  Over the years, that subforum has developed into its own subculture.  Generally speaking new members tend to spend their time in the more neo-centric forums, and then –if they like the general attitude of the site– find their way into the unrelated areas.  The unrelated sections generally have older members, so they’re the sections where you find a more “clubhouse” mentality (which isn’t at all a bad thing).  Sometimes members have issues that pop up and they want to vent to people they know, but not necessarily people they see everyday.  There’s also a history of completely crazy, but entertaining drama that erupts between members, some of which were placed in the “Best of” forum.  We have a saying, which I actually coined, that its “Neo-Geo.com: Come for the games, stay for teh drama” [sic]; I think it pretty much summarizes what keeps us old timers interested.


Do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run a fun and active forum?

  1. Don’t be too heavy handed in moderating your members: if you treat them like children, you will may end up with less interesting discussions and, in some cases, a messy rebellion.  Its about maintaining an adult level of respect.
  2. Be active in the online community.  If you’re too removed, people will can forget you’re there or grow to resent their absentee “rulers”.  It’s sort of like being the town constable going into the tavern with everyone else at the end of the day: the more comfortable everyone is with everybody, the less likely you’ll have serious issues with those members you regularly interact with.
  3. If you have to make an unpopular decision for the good of the website, be decisive but also take the time to carefully and clearly explain to everyone else why you made your decision –it lets people know you respect their intelligence –and if they’re taking time to spend on your forum, you should respect them.

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And for all the Neo-Geo fans out their, what’s your favorite game?
Magical Drop III, probably the best competitive puzzler out there.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I think it helps my tasks in that I find people interesting and I like to meet people and find out what they’re thinking.  Over the years I’ve actually met up with a number of members from the forum (its something over 70 by now… I’ve lost count), and I’ve found they’re all good people.  Some people look at internet forums as an opportunity to act out some e-persona they would like to have, but I’ve always –for better or worse– tried to stay like how I really am.  The best administrator or moderator will be able to roll with punches and not let things get to them if people get upset.  After all, its just the internet.

If you have any follow up questions, let me know.

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Author’s Comments: Thanks Bobak, you really packed in a lot of great advice here and I think it’s best summed up in your second to last sentence  “The best administrator or moderator will be able to roll with punches and not let things get to them if people get upset.”

You made some interesting points about tightening the forum rules as the forum matured.  Changes had to be made in small steps in order to meet the expectations of potential new members and not upset older, existing members.

You also touched on a key trend for many communities on the internet – the ‘Unrelated Topics’ (aka Offtopic and General) are the most active on the forum.  As you pointed out, a gaming site like New Geo tends to bring in people with similar interests around movies, sports, and music.  Or to paraphrase Bobak: “Neo-Geo.com: Come for the games, stay for teh drama”

Featured Forum – HackYour.Lefora.com

Published March 2, 2009 Featured Forum , Interviews , Online Communities 3 Comments
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Today we’re talking with coloneljack, the founder of the clever named hackyour.lefora.com.  Starting on Lefora only about a month ago, the colonel has been doing a great job of answering people’s questions on both our support forum and his hackyour.lefora forum.  We love the idea here at Lefora and we hope both sites can provide valuable help to forum admins.

So Colonel, what inspired you to start a forum for hacking up lefora?
As a born tinkerer, I’m always willing to take things to pieces to see how they work – and then see if I can put them back together again!  To be honest, setting up hackyour.lefora.com fulfilled a selfish need by allowing me to play with other’s forums when I couldn’t think of anything else to do to my own!

Also, visiting the support forum showed that there were people there asking the same questions – a dedicated forum of our own made sense. I hoped it would be easier for everyone who needed it to find help and/or advice, especially with the influx now from MSN.

What are people most interested in ‘hacking’ on Lefora?
Everybody wants to do different things with their forum – I think that’s a testament to the flexibility of Lefora. Some are happy with the default themes and just want photos or pictures in the right place, some want a new colour scheme, others just want the sidebar switched to the other side. What I don’t think people realise is how much of their forum can be changed with the CSS editor, and how easy it can be to make your forum look different to everybody else’s. I’m not saying anything is possible, but certainly more than you first think!

How do you find working with the CSS on Lefora?  What tools do you use?
As recommended by you guys, I use Firefox with the Firebug add-on. I also use the Firesizer add-on – this lets me check what layouts will look like on various screen sizes.

Before coming to Lefora, all I knew about CSS was how to spell it. After playing with Firebug for a while, turning bits of CSS on and off, changing values, and generally breaking your pages (Firebug makes the changes on-the-fly), I could figure out enough to start making real changes to the layouts. Apart from an image editing app or two, these are the only tools you’ll probably need.

Do you have any educational CSS sites or tutorials you would like to share?
For anything new I always go to www.w3schools.com – lots of reference material there for CSS. They also have options for you to try out CSS by making changes on-screen.

What are some of the features that originally drew you to Lefora?  Had you worked with other forum software in the past?
I’ve never worked with any forums in the past, but when the news came out that MSN was closing down, there were the expected groans, followed by people saying how hard it would be to set up somewhere else. Having never liked MSN much anyway, I knew there were better options out there. To prove a point, I Googled ‘forum’ and a few minutes later I had a fully-functioning replacement for MSN here at Lefora. The uploading and embedding options alone were a luxury compared to MSN. Everything else is icing on the cake.

If you could make improvements to Lefora, what would you like to see?
Get rid of the CMYK theme! It makes my eyes bleed! No, really, on a practical level, private categories would be useful for a lot of people, I think.

What is one piece of advice you’d like to share with a new forum admin starting their first forum?
Be patient – it won’t happen overnight… But it will only happen if your forum fulfils a need.

Finally, is there anything you would like to add?
Thanks to Hal9000, my admin, for knowing the stuff that I don’t!

Oh, and save your custom CSS code to a text file… There’s nothing worse than trying a new theme, and then realising it wipes your CSS!

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Author’s Comments: The Colonel has some really great advice here, especially the importance of customizing your forum from the start to give your community it’s own unique home on the web.  I’ve always thought one of the reason’s myspace gained in popularity compared to other services at the time was due to the amount of customization a person could do with CSS on their profile page.  Just like the real word, an online presence requires the same unique choices of personality – and that’s especially true for communities.

Featured Forum – Lifehouse on Lefora (LoL)

Published February 10, 2009 Featured Forum , Interviews , Online Communities 3 Comments
Tags: ,

Today we’re talking with Nicky James, who runs a forum on the popular band Lifehouse.  His forum is growing fast, with over 7,000 posts in less then a month since it’s creation. For those of you unfamiliar with Lifehouse, there’s a good chance you’ve heard some of their songs on the radio, such as Hanging By A Moment.

Welcome Nicky James.  Besides being a Lifehouse fan, what made you decide to start a forum?
I felt that there was a major lack of moderation and an overall sense of fellowship on the “official” Lifehouse forum at lifehousemusic.com.  And after being bogged down by a horde of clones and forum trolls I simply had enough. I didn’t want to fully drop out of the Lifehouse community because of the people I met. So with determination and a whole lot of free time I looked for an answer and eventually, after doing some homework, came across Lefora.com and set up shop. Plus, the name “Lifehouse on Lefora” has a cool ring to it and abbreviates well; “LoL”.


Are there other Lifehouse band forums out there that you have to compete with?  Is there anything you’re doing differently?
Hmm… I wouldn’t say that we “compete” with any other Lifehouse fan communities/forums. In fact, my ideal goal is to come to work closely with the other 2 forums that are largely focused on Lifehouse fans (lh-bsides.shortURL.com and lifehousemusic.com) in order to provide an awesome experience for Lifehouse’s fans. But my personal thoughts are that we that there was a certain niche that needed to be filled that no existing forum was addressing. The official boards will always have the stigma of being “Official”, and that can carry them for a long time. The B-sides forum is the next step in that it is separate from being official and is built by Lifehouse fans, for Lifehouse fans. And because of those reasons, that forum is pretty successful. I feel that Lifehouse on Lefora is the next step in that evolutionary process. One of the LoL members said it perfectly. She said “LoL fills a hole that the other forums do not fulfill. People here can joke around and laugh at funny video clips or talk about current events. There’s a more concrete sense of fellowship on LoL.” We take the best parts of other places and put them all on our forum.


As for what we do differently? Myself and my admin team keep in very close contact with members, were not some no name face that looms over everyone. Our forum also hasn’t looked the same since day one. Which was a big problem I had with other forums that all looked so bland or looked good but had looked the same for the last 2 years. We’re updating our look every week. We currently have 10 themes that we switch off every week and it keeps things looking fresh. We are also heavily involved with contests and giving prizes out to members for something as small as posting, say the 5000th post, all the way to full blown month long contests. We even have a special day coming in June where were going to be giving out more than $300 in prizes. you can go to one forum to be official, one to be more intellectual and serious, and one to just have fun and laugh your butt off with people that you’re on a first name basis with.

Where do most of your visitors come from? How do they first here about your site?
Thanks to the very close-knit community of fans that are out there over MySpace, Facebook, and other forums,it makes it extremely easy for us to cast a wide-net and reach many fans with ease. I’ve spoken with other admins of different forums that are struggling to find an audience and I think it all comes down to the demographic you’re trying to reach. If you run a video game fan forum, what happens then? You’re mainly going to be trying to attract males from ages 15-25. Lifehouse doesn’t necessarily have a target demographic or part of the world. We have members ranging in age from 13 to their 40′s and we’re represented in the US, UK, the Philippines, Canada, Indonesia, Australia and beyond. From what I’ve seen thus far, new members come to us mainly from Google. I’ve brought in quite a few members simply by contacting them directly and asking them to come check out LoL and because I have enough faith in my forum to where I know that they won’t be disappointed and sooner or later, they will want to get in on the all the fun and interesting conversations were carrying. The word “addicting” comes up quite often from members when describing why they spend so much time on the forum. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ve also had some members hear about us on the other existing forums and will come from there as well.

What first drew you to Lifehouse?  Are there any Lifehouse lyrics that you find inspiring?
Lifehouse’s lyrics have been described as the sonic equivalent of a good friend, or a warm blanket. It’s a divine mix of honest lyrics, and great musical hooks. They don’t pretend to have all of the answers but they sure make the questions sound interesting. A lot of Jason’s lyrics revolve around deep and sometimes spiritual self questioning and trying to find out who you are. You know, there are some artists Like Johnny Cash, or Bob Dylan that can tell one hell of a story but fail to make you look within yourself and question. Lifehouse really fills that niche and that is why I am continuously drawn to their music. Asking a Lifehouse fan to choose a favorite song or choice lyric is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. But if I had to choose one lyric I would have to quote a lyric from this song:

“I’d rather chase your shadow all my life,
than be afraid of my own,
I’d rather be with you,
Id rather not know
where I’ll be than be alone and convinced that I know,
cause the world keeps spinning around,
and my world is upside down,
and I wouldn’t change a thing,
I’ve got nothing else to lose,
I lost it all when I found you,
and I wouldnt change a thing,
No, you and I wouldn’t change a thing.” – Spin

Just recently, you were sitting on the other side of the interview desk, interviewing an award winning music video director (both Billboard and MTV awards).  How did you go about arranging that?  And has the interview spurred more interest on your forum?
I was setting up a forum section dedicated to Lifehouse music videos and came across the video for the 2005 song; Blind. I wanted to find a little more information on it. So while searching for some info I found out that the video was directed by Nigel Dick. I am very familiar with Nigel’s work and was surprised to see that this Lifetime Achievement Award winning director that has worked with such acts as Tears for Fears, Green Day, Elton John and has directed over 300 videos was working with our little band. I was definetly intruiged and wanted to look further into it. To my fortune, Nigel was very pleasant and we had a correspondence over the course of a couple weeks and I eventually just asked him for an interview, because that’s essentially what I was already doing. He obliged, and like in everything I do on LoL, I included the members and let them take the helm and ask the majority of the questions. They did a fantastic job and asked some very deep and intellectual questions. I posted the interview yesterday morning and we’ve had the single most busy day since the inception of LoL. I am currently trying to land an interview with Tina Majorino who has acted in over 20 movies and tv shows, but is best know for her role as Deb in the 2004 movie Napoleon Dynamite. She played the protagonist in the same music video that Nigel directed. I am also working on an interview with Lifehouse’s manager Jude Cole.

Do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run a fun and active forum?

  1. Include your members!!! They are the the lifeblood of the forum. This is especially important for a young forum. I rarely make changes on LoL without informing the members. I issue a weekly update usually including what has changed, why it has changed, and what’s coming up as far as new forum features or contests. If you give your members something to look forward to while also keeping your forum fresh in their minds, they will keep coming back. Another way I do this is by personally sending out welcome messages to every new member as they join the forum rather than just a cookie cutter message. Or worse, no welcome at all.
  2. Never make your forum about one thing. Sure, this is a Lifehouse fan forum. But people sometimes get confused, thinking that it is a place where you can only talk about Lifehouse and that’s not true. It is simply a place where Lifehouse fans gather. Our most popular thread right now is a thread that’s simply titled “I like cheese.” WTF, right? It’s fun to know that you can talk about anything and because you are all like minded, you can always bring it back to your forum’s purpose.
  3. Remember, you’re a leader, not a tyrant. Everett Dirksen said “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles. The first of which is to be flexible at all times.” Have fun with your members! You’re a member of your own forum, it shouldn’t be a chore. If you can find that space between being a “boss” and being a member, you will be in the perfect position to manage a successful forum. Being an admin can be a very thankless job. keep your chin up!

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Finally, is there anything you would like to add?
Yeah! This is probably totally cliche to Chief [admin of lefora support] at this point but I want to take the time to sincerely thank you for all the help you’ve given me and all the one on one time you’ve spent with me helping to hammer out technical issues with my forum. I know that yourself and the Lefora team are working your tails off to bring us this free service and sometimes it can be very very thankless. But everyone over on LoL is so grateful for you guys because if it wasn’t for you, we would not have met some of the awesome people we have come to know. So off with the nay-sayers! lol.

To forum admins: Keep working away at that forum. Fact is, that you’re going to have to put in a whole mess of your personal time into this forum to make it successful. Utilize the Internet. if you don’t have a Myspace, get one. Also make sure your mods and admins are properly trained. There’s no better way to annoy members than to anger them with power tripping mods who want to edit or delete every post.

I also want to thank the Lifehouse on Lefora team for all the hard work and dedication they put into helping me run this successful forum. Oreolover000 and cmacd, you guys are the best I could ask for. Thanks for all your help.

I’m also going to shamelessly plug Lifehouse now. *Shameless plug* Lifehouse is currently in the studio working on their fifth album that is slated for release this summer, but until then, you can buy their newest Gold certified album Who We Are. Also be on the look out for a new music video for the song “Make Me Over” coming soon!!!

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Author’s Comments: Nicky James provided some great commentary here.  I’ve visited the forum a number of times since it was first started, and Nicky James does keep the themes active and changing – which I think is great.  It always makes the forum look ‘fresh’ and hopping.  It’s very easy to change colors, background images, and header images on Lefora without changing your layout.  So members still feel comfortable on your forum, but they’ll know you’re interested in keeping things fresh.  Prize offerings are another great idea to spur activity – it doesn’t have to be anything large.  And finally, interviewing well known and respected people related to the forum is always a great way to spur interest and get new members to join – and asking for interview questions from your community is smart.

Kicking the tires on this puppy

Published February 3, 2009 accomplishments , stats 1 Comment

Last night, with a full gas tank, Lefora rolled passed the 200,000 member mark (now at 48,640 total forums), we still have a few months to go until our first birthday, so we’re all pretty excited over here.

Lefora ‘by the numbers’ for January:

  • 575,904 People
  • 8,682,123 Pageviews
  • 6.61 Average Pageviews / visit
  • 6:08 Avg. Time on Site
  • 27% of visitors came from a keyword search (mostly google of course)
  • 59% of visitors returned to the site, a third of our visitors returned 10 or more times!

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We were also recently reviewed at forum-software.org, a popular forum comparison website, we’re the first ‘hosted’ forum solution they’ve reviewed – they had to create a new category on their site just for us.

Warning! Do not feed the trolls.

Published January 21, 2009 Interviews , Online Communities 1 Comment

Trolls… We’ve all come across them, they were around before the web even existed, hanging around in dark corners of Usenet, lurking, waiting to bait an innocent subject.  Today, they’ve evolved into much more sophisticated creatures, not only inhabiting online forums, but living on blog comments, twitter accounts, yelp reviews, and online games – pretty much anywhere a lonely individual sitting at home can find a way to compensate for lack of ‘real-world’ friends.

Today, we’re talking with Andrew Heenan, and his site www.flayme.com/troll.  Andrew is well versed in how to deal with ‘trolls’ on the internet and took the time to share some of his knowledge with our audience.  His advice is great, and for anybody having a headache dealing with a troll, I suggest reading his website and comments below.

For any readers that might not be aware, could you explain in your own words what an internet troll is?
One who sets out to disrupt a forum, by posting in a way that will annoy or humiliate members – the motivation and methods vary, but a troll is no more than a troublemaker, who does it ‘because he can’!

Your site reveals an interesting fact, that the term ‘troll’ does *not* in fact come from slimy creatures living under bridges – so where did it come from?
The anglers among your readers will know that trolling is the art of trailing a bait, hoping that a fish will bite; for the internet troll, it’s all about the response. Just as many anglers will put the fish back after the catch, so the Internet troll has no real interest in the issues being discussed; they are simply entertaining themselves by causing frustration in others. It’s about power – trolls create the illusion of power by manipulating others.

Do you think there are any subjects or behaviors that attract trolls?
Though there are exceptions, most trolls don’t really put a lot of work into their hobby; so you’ll find sexist comments placed on feminist forums, racist or homophobic comments on political forums, and so on. All easy, obvious targets. A particular favorite seems to be the ‘fundies’ (religious fundamentalists), because they seem to be almost guaranteed to bite, however lame the troll’s bait.

What are some steps to get rid of a troll?
The most effective method of troll management is ‘Don’t Feed The Troll’; if it does not get a response, it will move off and try elsewhere; any response is validation of its sad existence, so should be avoided. But we’ve all been taken in; the skilled troll may start with a question or comment that may seem odd, but is not rude, wrong or particularly inappropriate. Once it has you hooked, then it attempts to manipulate you into anger or humiliation. One of the most effective troll tricks is to cause group members to disagree – often ‘planting’ a new member to defend them, with a plea to members to ‘give him another chance’. The resulting dispute allows the troll to leave the members fighting, with no further effort required.

Think back to the most difficult troll you had to deal with, how do you finally stop them?
This question goes straight to the heart of the problem – you cannot stop a troll, unless you are an owner or moderator. But you can manage it.

I’ve never had a problem in dealing with a troll to my satisfaction; I ignore it, I move away, or  I indulge in a little troll baiting to amuse other members. But while I may be happy with that, none of these actions will necessarily stop the troll, and the damage to the forum can continue.

It requires every member to ignore the troll; every moderator to spot them and take appropriate action … and that’s not always going to happen.

If you use newsgroups, it’s no trouble to ‘killfile’ trolls – but you still have to deal with other members’ responses to the troll. They cannot be stopped, because there’s effectively no moderation.

In forums or blogs, it’s a matter of moderation, and on more than one occasion, I’ve ceased to read a blog because the owner failed to prevent troll abuse to the point where the readability was reduced to zero. Trolls can only succeed if someone feeds them – or fails to moderate them off the board.

Any advice you’d like to give to mods or admins dealing with a troll?
I think the best rule for moderators is that it’s important to give the loyal members the benefit of the doubt, rather than worry about the troll’s ‘rights’. If it acts like a troll, and smells like a troll, then delete the posts and suspend membership. Then forget about it! Very occasionally, you may get it wrong, and the ‘troll’ was a confused or inarticulate ‘newbie’ – and that’s shame. But the priority must be to be fair to the forum.

I’ve been told ‘trolls have first amendment rights’ to free speech – it’s a civil rights issue’. Sure they do, on their own websites, and I respect their right to post whatever they want, subject to the law, on their own sites. I’m not saying they cannot troll, simply that they cannot troll on my property – and that’s my civil rights!

And never, ever, negotiate with a troll. Always ignore any email or other approach, as there’s a small risk of a frustrated troll becoming a stalker. But that’s another story …

Finally, is there anything you’d like to mention about your site or what you’re up to in 2009?
I’m always on the lookout for more tips on troll management, and I’m hoping to spend more time on updating the web site this year. But I say that every year!

Featured Forum – Zelda Universe Forums

Published January 15, 2009 Featured Forum , Interviews Closed

Today we’re interviewing Jason Rappaport of Zelda Universe Forums.  Zelda Universe (ZU) is running on vBulletin 3.8.0, with a number of modifications including a Search Engine Optimization mod, vBSEO.  (One of the features we offer here at lefora, is automatic search optimization for all your forum’s topics, optimizing the keywords on your page, ensuring that google and other search engines crawl your forum a few times a week.)

Zelda Universe Stats:
* Threads: 79,964
* Posts: 2,461,402
* Members: 52,570

How did Zelda Universe Forums start?
The founder is a very good friend of mine named Lars Christian-Simonsen. Initially, Zelda Universe was an offshoot of his personal site, and his little guides garnered so much praise that he split it off and formed a standalone site around it. Naturally, there’s a huge community of Zelda fans out there who want to gather and discuss the series, so it was a no-brainer to have a discussion forum to go along with the main site.

What have been some goals with the forum?
The common goal of the forum has pretty much always been to bring Zelda fans together in the most convenient and interactive way possible. I can’t tell you how many friendships and bonds have been formed as a result of the incredible community that has gathered on Zelda Universe – recently, two of our members married each other! When the forum first began, no doubt it was meant to be a hub for Zelda discussion, but it has grown into its own little metropolis. I’d like to see the forum more integrated into the main site to bring that community effort over to the content-side of things, but for the most part I just want to see the forum continue to grow and spawn projects of its own. The next step is complete crowdsourcing – taking the Zelda community’s projects developed on the boards and turning them into serious endeavors that we can share with everyone on the internet.


How did you go about first promoting your forum?
Google is always a huge help, but most of our members were longtime visitors before they decided to join up! It’s not uncommon for members to pop in, make their welcome thread, and say that they’ve been visiting the site for several years and only just decided to join the forums. Obviously it wasn’t just search engine traffic that brought us up – friends bring friends, word of mouth helps things out, and I know for a fact that Lars would run around showing off his latest projects and updates to the site on other forums. The culmination of all this “press”, if you will, drove a good deal of traffic to ZU and the forums. Not to mention our Zelda information was (and is) pretty in-depth.

Do you still need to promote your forum, or does it grow on it’s own?
Nowadays it grows on its own, though I still promote it as much as I can. But at this point we’re nearly eight years old (turning on Feb. 21st!) and we’ve got a reputation as the largest Zelda community online, so people do end up gathering at ZU one way or another, it seems, even if they go to other Zelda sites. I’ve done a lot of work to make ZU more visible – both in search engines and through word-of-mouth – and I hope it’s paid off as even more Zelda fans discover our great community. I know there are still millions of Zelda fans out there, so there’s always reason to promote!

Do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run a fun and active forum?

  1. Encourage your active members, and don’t be discouraged by the number of “inactive” members. Many people register just to get a glimpse at the site – the number of active participants on ZU at any given time is far less than the total number of registered members. A good rule to stand by is that 90% of your members will be inactive, 9% will be moderately active, and 1% will probably post more than you do. As long as you make sure the members posting are enjoying their time in the community, more people will come. Your boards will grow.
  2. Encourage your community to create their own projects, or suggest projects for you to create. By far one of our most active boards on ZU is the Feedback, Suggestions and Questions board, where people not only ask for help but also suggest new features to add to the site – and I daresay most of our new features are user-generated ideas. Now our members use these features daily, post in subforums that they wanted to be created, etc. It’s a community – build it together with your members.
  3. Encourage users to go off-topic. Don’t keep your boards to a single subject – we may be Zelda Universe, but our members discuss everything from Zelda to XBox to football to anime, and every so often I make a thread that’s just for laughs (usually in the Feedback section), and everyone spams it up and has a good time until we all decide it’s gotten out and hand and lock it up. But never limit your members – they’ll thank you for letting them have any kind of discussion they want to have. Freedom is the freedom to express oneself; never forget that.

.
And for all the Zelda fans out there, classic and new, which is your favorite Zelda?
My first Zelda game was Link’s Awakening, but by far my most favorite is The Wind Waker. The Wind Waker really brought me into Zelda and solidified my Zelda “fandom”, if you’d call it that and not an obsession! The Wind Waker, I believe, had a certain magic none of the other Zeldas had. Perhaps it was the art style that truly drew me in, because the storyline is pretty samey for a Zelda game. Whatever the case, many people are shocked to find that I found Ocarina of Time quite boring and never finished it, but loved The Wind Waker and have played it many times over. I don’t think that makes me any less of a Zelda fan; in fact, I’m proud not to be the generic Ocarina-of-Time-loving Zelda geek! The Wind Waker totally doesn’t get enough love.

Is there anything you would like to add?
If you’re board is just starting out, you’ve got to keep at it and really make a serious effort to grow the community. Just letting it sit there won’t help – like I said, Lars went out and made a fuss about ZU all over the internet, and if you really think your board has potential, you should be doing that, too! Once you get the ball rolling, it’ll pick up momentum and eventually become an unstoppable force. But only if you put in the effort, and only if you really believe it can go somewhere. If you don’t believe in your own project, well, who else is going to? Nobody, that’s who! So build up your community and make it great, because that’s the only thing it can become.

—-
Author’s Comments: Jason provided some great knowledge here.  Some points of his I think everybody should take away from this:

  • “It’s not uncommon for members to pop in, make their welcome thread, and say that they’ve been visiting the site for several years and only just decided to join the forum.”
  • “A good rule to stand by is that 90% of your members will be inactive, 9% will be moderately active, and 1% will probably post more than you do.“
  • Word-of-mouth is very helpful, one way to do this, is an admin, go to other forums and show-off your latest projects
  • “Encourage users to go off-topic” – after all, you’re creating a community of people that share interests, it’s very likely they’ll have fun talking about other topics on your forum.

Featured Forum – Monkey Steals the Peaches

Published January 13, 2009 Featured Forum , Interviews Closed

monkey steals the peaches

Today, we’re talking to Doctor Death, founder of Monkey Steals the Peaches, a fun forum that we’ll keep you laughing between videos, photos, and of course, the commentary.

Do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins in order to run a fun and active forum?
Sure thing! I would say the most important thing is to keep it lively. If your members go onto your site to see whats new and theres nothing new since the last time they were on… they are going to get bored with it very quickly.

Second, keep your posts short and to the point. If you go rambling on and on, your members are going to lose interest. People have short attention spans.

And Third… Keep it Fun and open-minded. Nobody want to be on a site where all the members are Die-hard subject-Nazi’s who cant see the other side of the coin.

What are some of the reasons you originally choose lefora over another forum service?  Was there any other software you ran a forum with in the past?
I searched through quite a few forum sites before I chose Lefora. Almost every one of them would say they were free, let you create a site and then want you to pay to use it. Not Lefora. Besides, Lefora had the best looking and most functional page layouts that I could find.

Yea, I tried a few of the ones I found online but I couldn’t even tell you the name of them now… Once I found Lefora, I never looked back.

If you could make improvements on Lefora, what would you like to see?
The only thing I would like to be able to do is to place Images in the middle of a post without using an outside image source like Photobucket. Using one of those deals for your images is a royal pain in the butt. I am pretty good with the Photoshop, and I love to post images. Being able to Drag & Drop images would be Awesome! And One of my members wants to be able to change his user name without losing all his post counts and links. Other than those small things, I would say that Lefora runs perfectly!

How did you go about first promoting your forum?
Word of Mouth… at first. Then through the Lefora Help page. Then I started going to other peoples forums and chatting with them. I use the “monkeystealsthepeaches.com” as my signature on my profile wherever I go. I am currently looking for more ways to promote… we always welcome more members at the monkey!

Finally, is there anything you would like to add?
Yea! I just wanted to add that Chief has really helped me out in to months that I have been at this and he and Chatham were the ones that helped me become a dot-com as well. My friends and I have had a ton of fun on the monkey and I feel like we are just getting started. Things here are awesome.

And just how awesome are you personally Doctor Death?
Well, as you know… I am Incredibly Awesome in every way possible. Being an Ex-Wrestler/Astronaught and Administrator of the Greatest Forum ever, I just don’t see how I could get much more Awesome than I already am. Just come to Monkeystealsthepeaches.com and you can revel in my Awesomeness too. See ya there Kiddies!

Author’s Comments: Thanks for that feedback Doc, we’ll be introducing a new posting editor soon that will make it easier to upload photos from your computer (though you can do it now, by clicking the ‘upload files’ button.

A toast to 2009!

Published January 5, 2009 accomplishments , product 1 Comment

Happy Holidays from Lefora Forums

With the start of the New Year, we have big plans here at Lefora on building out new features for your forums – we’ll especially be focused on features to help mature communities faster – from ranking & point systems to widgets that will help promote your forum outside of lefora.  We’ll also be building an API to offer more services for developers to ‘hook’ into Lefora.

We launched less than a year ago, but in 2008, we’ve seen 1.85 million people visit your 40,000+ forums.  With an average visit time of 6 min 20 seconds.  A third of the traffic to the forums comes straight from people searching on google, yahoo, and the other search engines – much of this comes from the search engine optimization (seo) that we build directly into your forum.


Cheers!
Saúde
乾杯
¡Salud!
Prost!
乾杯!
Kippis!
Salute!
Skål!
Na zdrowie!
Santé!

Featured Forum – Nature vs. God Forum

Published December 16, 2008 Featured Forum , Interviews , Online Communities , review 1 Comment

Nature or God Forum

Today, we’re talking to Wrenna and Tete who recently moved over to Lefora from MSN Groups.  If you have an MSN Group yourself, and would like to learn more about our MSN Groups migration options, send us an email at ‘upgrades -at- lefora.com‘

Wrenna and Tete are running Nature Or God, a group on religion, philosophy and politics.  As their description states, “Because listening to each other can change the world.”

So to start, what topics are covered in your forum, are they philosophical, religious, political, or some combination of all three?

All three topics are discussed. We are mostly a religious debate forum but news topics are regularly covered also. Religious debate is usually between theists and atheists, and covers topics like evolution vs. intelligent design,separation of church and state, the meaning of free will, and whether children are born believing in God. These are some of the topics on our general board right now.  some science topics arise and we now have a sister site at Lefora, Science and Religion.

We do have a political board because we found during the recent election that some members couldn’t stop talking about it and some didn’t want to talk about it, so with its own board they have a choice.

We have found that all three of these major topics, philosophy, religion, and politics will intersect at various times. They are really inseparable.

With such controversial topics, what steps do you take to make sure your group stays focused?  Do you ever have to intervene to stop personal attacks?

That’s a very good question. Both of us are completely un-invested in who’s right and who’s wrong. We care about civil dialogue. Tete is a natural diplomat, and a very talented one. We try to be very patient and give lots of chances to people who lose their focus. Only rarely do we have to cancel a membership and more often than not that person gets another chance later on.

Most of the time though, a simple request or reminder is sufficient.

Your group on MSN was incredibly popular, I saw over 1/2 million posts listed through the topics.  What helped drive that activity?

The members. They are what make or break a group. We have been fortunate to have lots of really great members who have a passion for this type of discourse. It’s always great to see unlikely friendships form, or even see people change they’re thinking and opinions. People are endlessly fascinating and so is the way their minds work. And that gives rise to our other motto: “Let’s dare to think together”.

You’ve been using Lefora for about a month now, as ‘fresh’ admins to Lefora, what do you think about Lefora compared to MSN Groups?

We like Lefora,We like the simplicity and the layout of the boards. Many MSN groups were devoted to PSP and Graphics, but we are a place of words (to quote one member, Peltigera). Lefora is a great place for words. It’s also great to have a help group to go to and get answers or a fix almost immediately. It shows that the “Man in charge” cares. I find that pretty impressive. We don’t want to bash MSN but there you are lucky to get a form letter.

For managing your group, are there any features you found on Lefora that were new to you?

Spam control, being able to move an entire thread with just one click, and thumbs up or down come to mind. I’m a big fan of all three. It was also nice to be able to send invitations from our management email through Lefora. We are used to doing one at a time.

Finally, do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run an engaging and active forum?

Three tips?  Don’t abuse your power, be humble (learn how to say ‘I don’t know’; ‘I am sorry’; ‘Thank you’, among other phrases that will show people that you care) and let people be as free as is possible.  The key?  Management appears as little as possible.

Wrenna & Tete: Thank you for having us, it is an honor.

Vincent: Thank you for your commentary, I’m sure many other forum admins will find this interesting and helpful.

5 posts a minute…

Published November 19, 2008 Misc. , stats 3 Comments

Paul realized this number – that’s how much activity we’re seeing on lefora right now.  Andrew took it a step farther:

370,333 words typed into posts in the last 24 hours, thats 257 words
per minute, which is approximately 3 reasonably skilled typists typing
into lefora non-stop all day.

Featured Forum – CU Freebies Only Forum

Published November 17, 2008 Featured Forum , Interviews , Online Communities , review 10 Comments

Today, we’re talking with Laura of CU Freebies Only Forum. Their forum is a place for designers to share Commercial Use freebies items. In less than 2 months, Laura has build a forum with over 800 members and 3,400 posts. Quite an accomplishment to happen so quickly.
–


So Laura, the first question everybody would like to hear, how did you grow your forum so fast? How did you get so many members participating?
CROSS PROMOTE and Always Invite folks to join daily!  My Admin and my members also do the same thing, they can’t help it!

Lots of Designers join the Forum to generate traffic to their stores and blogs….they offer free items to get them there and when the members buy they will buy from the other members in the end. And the members are looking for those free items to practice with and create with.

Are there any promotional or marketing tips you would like to share with other forum admins?
I belong to other forums with the same interest.  I cross promote on my 2 blogs and the forum.  I sponsor a Blinkie (ad exchange) on my Forum for my members for free. They sport the forum blinkie and I in turn sport their blinkie on the forum.  I advertise on freebie scrap booking exchanges , both blogs and the forum.  I use Entire Card…it works I only taking ads that are relevant to my topics.  And I place ads only on other relevant blogs all for free.  Giving away something free helps.  I am listed in a lot of Topsites that are relevant to my topic.

My Admin team does the same thing cross promoting and hosting challenges.  I really must say without them I would not be able to keep up. And the forum would not have grown so fast…..having a Fantastic Admin Team is a Must have!
–

Where do most of your visitors come from? How do they first hear about your site?
They first came from my blogs where I always post an invite in every post….now they come from Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches, and even from Lefora itself, personal blogs, Kaboodle, forums, sharing groups, designers, when I check to see where my visitors are coming from I visit that site, blog or forum…..thank them and leave a comment with my URLS.

I started my CU Freebies only Blog after my other Blog…..it became so popular that folks were leaving notes about cu freebies and asking me to feature them….wow it took off.  I featured them and then cross promoted them to get traffic to their sites.  Win Win!!
–

What goal did you have in mind when you first started your forum? What goals would you like to achieve at this point?
I actually was getting overwhelmed with keeping up with folks who wanted to be featured and not being able to keep up….I thought how about a forum where the designers can post their freebies and I can feature them from the forum on my blog.  I won’t have to search everyday for good stuff to feature.

I am now in the process of testing to see if the designers want to post some of their creations that they sell on the forum and give forum members a discount.  I provide a free way to advertise and reach new folks everyday.

The forum has grown fast and takes time to keep it cleaned up and running smooth…I was surprised when my blog took off and mostly very surprised when the forum surpassed the blog.
–

What was some of your reasoning for choosing Lefora over another forum service? What other forum software have you worked with in the past?
I have never ran a forum before, so I searched for something that would be easy to navigate for myself and my members….we all like the format, and it is very simple to work with….doesn’t have all the bells and whistles but sometimes that is what complicates things for the members.

I’ve been a member of forums but not even an admin or moderator and I simply was confused with the forums I belong to…. I get lost easy.

So Lefora offers simplicity and consistency….Win Win!!!
–

Lastly, do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run a fun and active forum?
Check out others blogs, forums and sites that are relevant to your topic….be active and cross promote…offer something they don’t and be consistent…..work at promoting and being active in your niche and the growth will come as long as you are having fun!  Put your URL in your signature, comment on the other blogs, forums etc…. always leaving your URL when ever you comment or contribute anywhere.  And never stop Inviting folks to join.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Follow-up thoughts: Laura is doing a fantasitic job at promoting her forum and one of the fatest growing Lefora forums.  It’s interesting to see that she’s been doing some cross advertising between her forum and other forums – as a free trade.  That’s a great idea for anybody running a forum on a topic that shares similiar interests with other sites.  Reach out to similiar sites, and let them know you can advertise their site on yours by putting an image and link on your sidebar in exchange for the same. Additionally, you could always purchase google ads on google’s search result page, it may run you only 20c-40c per thousand impressions.

How To Behave On A Forum

Published November 10, 2008 Online Communities , videos 1 Comment


Featured Forum – Era & Eric Lévi Fan Forum

Published October 28, 2008 Featured Forum , Online Communities Closed
Tags: , , , , ,

Hi, today we’re talking with Jesus (Ihesus) admin of the international fan forum, Era & Eric Lévi. Jesus has been very helpful to Lefora. He completed translating one of the most requested languages on Lefora – Español (Spanish). Jesus spent many hours and we are thankful to him and all the other translators that have helped Lefora expand into other regions. I’m sure many Spanish speakers are thankful to Jesus as well.

Hi Jesus, could you give us a brief background on Era Ecic Levi?
Well, Era is a music band created by the French composer and musician Eric Levi in the year of 1995-96. Era has been recognized for the song ‘Ameno’ as a very successfully song in the Mastercard theme song in the FIFA World Cup in France in 1998 and all over the World. Now Era has 4 albums, the last one is called ‘Reborn’ (you can listen on my forum). Some people say Era is New Age, others say Era is pop-rock. For me it’s just great music.

Do you have any goals you would like to accomplish with your forum?
Of course I do, to be one of the largest forums of Era on the Internet and give this music to people who want to learn about them. On our forum, we have people from México, the United States, Egypt, Russia, Brasil, etc. No matter what language you speak, we’ve got an answer too.

Were there any reasons why you choose Lefora over another forum service?
Before choosing lefora, I’ve tried some others, like miarroba (one of the biggest but only in spanish), tuforo, etc… and also yahoo groups. But no one has the features and the capacity that lefora has. Here I can post in guest mode. I can embed videos, create my own widgets or… upload files; all this together like nothing else.

How did you find the experience of translating Lefora into another language?
I always wanted to help others and this was just a coincidence. I read the post, left a message, and then I translated the site. It was nice, it is a new and great experience to translate an entire website to another language. I had never done this before, except on my own website). Doing this felt really good because I know there are thousand people who want Spanish. It is something to help ‘feel at home’.

Anything else you would like to share?
Lefora has grown very fast, and with reasons, because the service, is really impressive. You can receive support almost immediately (if you need it), there are always someone who will help you. There are other admins that can help you as well, like a workgroup. Lefora is the best place to host a forum and it is very easy to use. I am very happy with my decision to host my forum in lefora. Performance is quality and lefora is both.

Featured Forum – SuSE Unbound Forum

Published October 6, 2008 Featured Forum , Interviews , Online Communities 1 Comment
Tags: , , ,

Today, we’re talking to mattb4 from the SuSE Unbound Forum. Matt has been very active in our support forums, helping other forum admins and providing feedback.

Hi Matt, do you you have 3 simple tips you could offer for running an active forum?

  1. Find and enthuse folks that have a like philosophy. Their contributions will create the life necessary to have an active Forum.
  2. Be ready to inject into your Forum unflagging attention. Never leave someone to feel that no one is paying attention to their postings.
  3. Have fun yourself.

I noticed your forum was linked from the Wikipedia SuSE article. Do you know if that’s been a good source of traffic?
It has helped bring in some. All mentions through out the Internet will help others to find your Forum. Ultimately, Word of Mouth is the strongest advertisement.

How else have you been promoting your forum?
In the Linux World, Forums have been instrumental in helping people that are new, into learning and adopting a Linux Distro. Linux has created many groups of folks that share the idea of Open Source as well as perfecting their skills with using it. You tend to get to know through participation many savvy, smart, and clever people this way. So by accessing this group there is a source of potential members.

What are some of the reasons you originally choose lefora over another forum package?
It has potential and I feel the folks behind Lefora are dedicated to improving the experience and providing a high level of service not readily obtainable by some of the other Free Hosting services. Many features have been added in the relatively short time since I started suseunbound.com.

Anything else you would like to share?
For those contemplating starting a Forum, be not discouraged, keep adding fresh material. Understand that you need to be active and creative in making your Forum interesting. Also keep track of what might be going on at Lefora. Promote features to your users so they know what is available.

Most importantly, if you can get good people to help like I have with my 2 Admins: Deltaflyer and Feathermonkey (Who handled the css for the Forum) and Great Moderators: Bozo and Badgerfruit, who add many hours of their own time. Plus many regular members that find a place, you will be successful.

In conclusion; My Thanks to the good people at Lefora for providing the place to create my Forum.

Forums and creating online ‘community’

Published September 29, 2008 Online Communities , product 1 Comment

When we first launched Lefora, we made a decision early on to refer to our service as a ‘forum’ as it’s an abstract idea that people are very familiar with – it predates the web.

Ultimately, we see Lefora as enabling communities to do more online – the ‘forum’ is the essential core of any group coming together to communicate. We’re focused on the conversation, but have many social features surrounding the forum, from a headlines page featuring hot topics based on community participation, to member profiles that feature everything a person says across the forum. We’ve added other features like thumbs up & down to offer community moderation, email notifications to encourage members to return to the site, and search engine optimization to ensure new people find a lefora site via a google search.

A friend sent us a nice article, How to Grow a Customer Forum into a Social Media Site, that highlights the changes that one company took to evolve their standard forum to a place where their customers could come together online – which ultimately benefits the company by building a community around their product.

The case study makes some good points, specifically highlighting how:

  • A community attracts more web traffic
  • Connects with consumers
  • Empowers brand advocates to spread their message
  • Builds interest and expertise

Featured Forum – The Round Table Forum

Published September 22, 2008 Featured Forum , Online Communities 1 Comment
Tags:

Today, we’re talking to Christian (borix7) of The Round Table forum. Christian started his forum more than 6 months ago. He’s been incredibly helpful to us at Lefora – providing feedback, supporting us around the web, answering questions in the support forum, and helping us translate Lefora into Spanish.

Christian, what are people talking about on The Round Table?
Lately we are pretty much talking about anything. The Round Table (TRT) Started as a community of friends that wanted to mainly talk about Boxing. After tons of topics started concerning other things besides Boxing it went from TRTBoxing to TRT Everything. So we decided to keep it as an everything Forum with just us friends. TRTBoxing.Lefora.com will be the new Boxing Forum for anyone to join.

Do you have 3 simple tips you could share with other forum admins to run a fun and active forum?

  1. Let the Forum go with the flow (will make it a lot more fun for everyone).
  2. Keep it interesting and simple.
  3. Log in, read and Post (easy to fall behind with Forum addicts like everyone in TRT)

How have you gone about promoting your forum?
Since in my forum we all know each other it was easy, just word of mouth. For my new forum though I plan on doing things like making flyers and banners that members can put on their Myspace, facebook etc linking to the forum and posting the forum address everywhere there’s boxer fans.

Have you used other forum software in the past? If so, how would you compare Lefora to past experiences with forums?
Yes I have used other Forum Software in the past they were all too typical forum like. Lefora makes it look different and adds lots of other useful things like the widgets. I think Lefora’s team is the thing that puts Lefora ahead of any other Forum Software. If there’s something that other software have that Lefora doesn’t have Lefora’s team will do their best to incorporate it and actually make it better.

Anything else you would like to comment on?
Congrats to Lefora for such a great service and Thanks.

Lefora Posting Activity

Published September 8, 2008 Misc. , Online Communities , stats Closed

Andrew, with his degree in Physics, is always turning out cool visualizations, from lefora stats, to our Leforasaurus 404 mascot.

This weekend, he put together an interesting stat on posting activity for the first week of September (based on the San Francisco PST time zone). The dark squares in the center are topics, and the light gray squares are the posts (this chart shows a healthy ratio). We see that our heaving posting times tend to be midday/afternoon – with not as many people posting at 1am :P

What’s appears to be a little too subtle hear is the ‘wave’ affect that we see on visits and page views to our site. Each week, our stats have a wave-like cycle, with Friday/Saturday being our lowest activity, and Tue/Wed being our highest level of activity.

rapidshare downloads


Click for full size.

Featured Forum – Orange County Fixed Forum

Published September 5, 2008 Featured Forum , Online Communities 1 Comment

OC Fixed Forum

Today, we’re talking to Huphtur from the Orange County Fixed Forum. Founded just 3 months ago, they have over 400 members and 8,000 posts. Orange County Fixed has helped us beta-test upcoming features and they are currently running our ‘new view’ which introduces flat topics and pagination.


Huph, what’s the topic or general theme of your forum? What are people talking about?
Orange County Fixed is a forum for the local fixie scene in Orange County, CA. We generally use the site to talk about bikes, meeting up for rides and all other nonsense that goes along with the so called “fixie scene”

Before you started your forum, I remember talking to you on support, you had a lot of great questions. What went into your decision for choosing lefora over another forum offering?
I’m Dutch and frugal and live by the rule: If it’s free, it’s me! But seriously, I didn’t want to deal with server maintainance and other scenarios that would take the fun out of running a forum. Plus the way you guys answered my questions, I knew you guys were legit.

Do you have 3 simple tips you could offer for running an active forum?
1. Let the users dictate the content, they are the ones using the forum.
2. See 1.
3. See 2.

How have you promoted you forum, and are you still continuing to promote or does it grow on it’s own?
Since it’s a forum for a local scene, the growth is 100% organic. Whenever an active member meets a new fixie rider on the street, he/she will always give a heads-up about orangecountyfixed.com. And I think some members are working on stickers and shirts. I’ll send ya one if they ever get made.

Have you faced any challenges with Lefora?

Before Orange County Fixed, most users were on a different forum, which runs on Vanilla platform. It’s nice, but it does certain things in a very peculiar way, so it took a while for users to ditch those habbits and really understand Lefora’s features. I set up a topic for this to make it easier for people.

What would you like to see on Orange County Fixed one year out?
Less drama! Orange County is really like that TV Show “The OC”. It’s crazy, but secretly fun. I’ve met some awesome people via the forum and been on some really cool rides.

Anything else you would like to comment on?
Thanks Lefora for giving us a platform to support the Orange County Fixie scene.

Featured Forum – Club Poker Forum

Published August 20, 2008 Featured Forum , Online Communities , review Closed
Tags:

club poker forum on lefora

Today, we’ll be interviewing peerless67, who runs one of the larger forums on lefora, ClubPokerForum. The topic of their community is online poker, with hundreds of members participating across tens of thousands of posts.


First off, do you you have 3 simple tips you could offer for running an active forum?
1. ADVERTISE
2. ADVERTISE
3. ADVERTISE

How did you go about first promoting your forum?
Adding the link to my profile on the sites I play poker (as it is a poker forum)

Do you still need to promote your forum, or does it grow on it’s own?
We still promote it but word gets out and many have joined through other members. In 4 months we have managed to sign up over 460 members.

What are some of the reasons you originally choose lefora over another forum package?
Honestly the forum was free and easy to set up and use.

Lefora strives to block spam on our forums. How have your experiences been with spammers on your forum?
We have had no problems that I am aware of.

Have you had problems with trolls or inappropriate members on your forum? If so, how did you manage their behavior?
We have had a couple of incidents, nothing major and simply deleted the offending material.

Anything else you would like to comment on?
Lefora has been great, the staff have always responded to questions promptly and have always been willing to help in anyway they can. Many new features have been added in the 4 months my forum has been running and if the improvements continue Lefora will be a world beater.

~~~~~~~~
Vincent s (lefora) Comments: peerless points out that advertising is the best way to keep a forum active. As he later stated, advertising can just include linking to your forum from your profile on other websites. It doesn’t have to be paid advertising. You can ask your members to link to your forum as well from other websites they participate in. Anything from other forums, to blogs, to social networks.

Later in the year, we’ll be introducing widgets that will allow your members to promote your forum for you.

lefora status update: short service interuption

Published August 9, 2008 Uncategorized Closed
Tags:

You may have noticed that for 20 minutes today your forum loaded slowly or possibly not at all. This is because we pushed out several of new forum features, and it affected your forum service. We’re sorry.

What are these awesome features that slowed your forum service?

We’ve made it easier for admins to manage user permissions. It’s also easier to track what people on your forum are doing. Check out the ‘memberships’ tab to find more information about your users on a much cleaner interface.

Please email ‘chief -at- lefora.com’ if your forum has a hard time loading — and let me know what you think of the new memberships features.

Today we passed 20,000 forums

Published July 30, 2008 accomplishments 1 Comment
Tags: , ,

Well it took us about 3.5 months to reach our first 10,000 forums, and now the second 10,000 have come in a almost a month shy of that. Thank you for choosing Lefora and helping us improve our service. We’re exited to see what we’re gonna look like at 50k!

And keep an eye out for an all new directory we’re working on, so that you can find communities on the thousands of diverse topics hosted on lefora.


Sharing a fascination with web forums

Published July 9, 2008 product 2 Comments

Russell Beattie put together a great piece about the value of forums and explores some of the behaviors on larger forums, such as 4chan.org.

http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/my-fascination-with-web-forums

Russell talks of the importance at times of anonymous (guest) posts – like their low barrier to entry. The drawback are the spammers that take advantage of the system. That’s why we’re building out anti-spam support, similar to what exists on services like gmail and wordpress to keep the forum ‘doors’ open but block the spam with some tough bouncers.

Another interesting post of his, is the concept of ‘no spam or trolls‘ on twitter, thanks to the one-way friending functionality. This is close to something we’ll be building out around lefora as we’ll be adding support for ‘fans’ and ‘foes’ later this year. With the idea that posts from your foes will be collapsed automatically to help prevent the incited arguments by trolls. We hope to be able to extract community level ranking out of this as well (a person frequently marked as a foe or with many thumb down remarks.)

What words would you use to describe lefora?

Published June 30, 2008 Misc. 1 Comment

Well, according to  Wordle, the fun toy for generating tag clouds on websites:

Just how many people use forums?

Published June 17, 2008 Online Communities 1 Comment

That’s a question we get often and it can be hard to quantify. But Paul found an interesting chart on Forrester that shows almost one-third of all U.S. Internet users read online forums, that comes in to a close 2nd for all online ‘participation’ activities, with video watching just 1 percentage point above that. What’s interesting, is that reading forums, and posting in forums, come in close to the top positions respectively for reading and posting anything online.

In the U.S., more people read online forums or groups than visit social networking sites, read review sites, or read blogs (comparing them individually).

More people contribute to online forums or groups than comment on blogs, upload photos, publish a blog, or edit wikis (again, comparing them individually).

groundswell chat

Full chart. Or checkout the book, Groundswell.

Book Review: Managing Online Forums

Published June 12, 2008 review 5 Comments
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managing online forums book

The author of “Managing Online Forums“, Patrick O’Keefe sent us a copy to review. It’s a fantastic book for any forum admin (or anybody running an online community for that matter), and I highly recommend it. Patrick dives deep into all aspects of running a forum, from creating it, to promoting it, to fostering the community.

Patrick sat down to answer some questions we wanted to share with our community.

—

Patrick, you start off with common ways forums get started, such as launching a new stand-alone community, to adding a forum on an existing site. On Lefora, we’ve seen our fastest growing communities are forums that launch alongside an existing community. Do you have 3 short tips for an admin launching a stand-alone new community to foster that initial growth?

  1. Launch with activity. Before your site goes live, get some friends and/or interested people together and have them start discussing the topic so that you actually have something going on when it comes time to launch.
  2. Make it as easy as possible for people to find you. Choose a domain name that is easy to remember and spell. Spell words correctly, try to avoid numbers, don’t use dashes and register a .com if at all possible. Make it so that search engines can access your content. Don’t put obstacles in your way unneccessarily. You don’t need that.
  3. Finally, don’t get caught up in what other, bigger forums in your subject arena are doing. I’ve known administrators who were far too worried about who they perceived as competition. Focus on yourself and be the best that you can be.

You talk about ‘Developing Guidelines’ in your book, dedicating a chapter to it. Do you think setting (and following) these guidelines are more important in an early stage forums or a larger established forum

I think it’s very important for both. You want to set guidelines and policies as early as you can to set the tone for everything that happens later and to ensure that your community gets started on the right track. Guidelines are sort of a vision statement. They speak to who you are, who you want to be and what your community is all about.

Guidelines are an essential to moderation. You can’t remove posts without having policies in place or it’ll seem like you are pulling imaginary standards out of your head. Discretion is a part of moderating a community, but documented policy is what makes discretion possible. It’s always harder to add guidelines later, than it is to start with them

Another chapter is dedicated on how to Promote Your Community and the work involved, which is a popular question we hear. With regards to cross promoting communities, how has your success been?

I’d say it has been successful, but that’s subjective. I’ve had people who were members at multiple forums that I managed. I’ve had people that were on staff at more than one of my forums at a time, as well. We do a good amount of cross promotion between the sites that are in my network.

Continue reading ‘Book Review: Managing Online Forums’

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