Forum Moderators: rogerd
The best way of doing that I think is to build a forum, but then it needs moderated and we leave ourselves open to slagging inside the member section (although this may not happen of course).
Still, I really want to see if I can come up with a way of getting a community feel and wondered if anyone has any experience of doing this and could throw a few tips my way?
The great thing about a forum is that it *is* its members - people create the environment themselves. Is there any way to get this without the messiness? (Possibly a cake-and-eat-it attitude I know.)
I'm thinking of things like free gifts, competitions, news to keep it fresh, but it still doesn't create that participatory feeling.
Any ideas folks?
I am going for the personal approach - using my own name where I can and giving my own opinion on different subjects, by doing this I hope for people to become more familiar with me and my site.
That may not be easily done if it is for company site.
Be great for Us vs Them, Men vs Women, Yanks vs Brits or any other combination for battle of the brains!
Through in VOIP and boy you could have loads of fun! ;)
If you believe that a forum is too high maintenance, perhaps you could consider some other ways to allow visitors to interact with your site and each other. A few random thoughts, with an emphasis on lower maintenance:
1) Do a blog with comment ability. Not as free-wheeling as a forum, but interactive.
2) Add polls on topics of interest.
3) Let regular visitors upload a profile page; these could be quite elaborate, depending on the site's topic. (Could include stuff like lists of favorites, etc.0
4) Add a review section where members can post Amazon-like reviews.
Here's a really off-the-wall idea: take some of the community-building guts of a good forum package - who's online, profiles, private messaging, instant messaging - and put that online in some kind of "member center". You could even use the forum part for announcements, etc. Just strip out all the stuff about posting replies, starting topics, etc. You'd end up with a lot of potential for member interaction without the hassles of having to moderate a forum 24/7.
I would look into one of the phpBB "aftermarket" portals (search for "phpBB portals"....). You can take much of what rogerd posted and utilize the framework of the portal to make the various sections "cozy" for your feeling of community without actually running a forum.
You could replace the (usual) forum center section with a blog (though blogs tend to take on lives of their own as well, and sometimes require as much moderating, slicing and dicing as do fora!), have a "shoutbox" to one side, a local weather section to the other side, a local "news in brief" rss feed at the top, a "joke of the day" at the bottom, notation of events, birthdays, etc. (Just don't do a whole bunch of "jumpy twitchies" so the page looks like a flea circus on a bald dog....)
Sounds like fun, y'know? May go there myself!
I really like the idea of using the forum shell; not too much work but lots of interactivity potential - and keeping it personal should be do-able.
Thanks again
Cy
Cheers
Cy
While guestbooks are often sources of spam, they do provide some minimal interactivity. Since they are linear in nature, the "moderation" time (to check for spam or inappropriate messages) would be low. It's hard to say how much of a community effect it would have, though.
