How to get the message across

[viggen]

i was wondering how other webmaster handle announcements on the discussion board...

For example;

We start a competion...
We have give aways...
We want to point to interesting threads...
We want to announce new features of the board...

How do i get people to know that quickly and fast?

We make use of newsletters, (not every forum member is subscriber though), we have in the signature of all admins links to places we want them to go...

What else can we do to get the attention to the threads you think are important?

We dont have an announcement board yet, is it effective? do people go there and read it? whats your experience

regards
viggen

[Gargen]

you can do a mass email or create an annoucment section

[Beagle]

One problem with an announcement section is that not everyone will visit it regularly. One site I post on (uses vBulletin) is set up so that when the admin posts an announcement, it's also posted at the top of each subforum. This catches the people who never leave their "own" subforum. As I said, I just post there, so I don't know how this is set up, but it works really well. If it's an especially important announcemeent, the mods in the various subforums also post a message pointing it out and asking everyone to read it.

[rogerd]

That's called a "sticky thread" in vBulletin, and a mod or admin can promote any thread to remain stuck at the top of the forum.

phpBB has a similar function, along with most forum software. (One variation is an "announcement" which displays above the threads but may not look like a thread itself.)

[Beagle]

rogerd, this one seems to be set up as a kind of "hybrid" between those two. The "Announcement" thread shows up above and a little separated from the rest of the threads, then the sticky threads are at the top of the "regular" list of threads. But you do have to open the Announcement thread to read it -- It might be even better if it were set up so the announcement itself was displayed, not looking like a thread.

[viggen]

thanks for the answers, however i dont use vbulletin,

it seems a simple announcement board has to do it then, unless someone else has an idea...

regards
viggen

[Heartlander]

What kind of board are you running?
Do you have full access to the html (or whatever you are using) editing?
Phpbb has very nice News Bar features....or you can simply code a Site News box in just above the list of forums....
Put blinking thingies and such around it with colorful text....hehe