Making a surfer forum?

mountaineer · 2010-04-04, 12:42 AM

I have an IP Board setting on my server with arcade and all installed.

Has anyone played around with surfer forums? I don't mean gfy either. j/k

Thanks

hincapie · 2010-04-04, 09:51 PM

Had some in the ancient past - these days though, most surfer forums I come across are full of links to torrents/rapidshare full movies and the like.

However, if you find a nice little niche to focus on, its probably still possible.

terry · 2010-04-05, 09:06 AM

Go for it - but be careful with spammers and focus on seo. As hincapie said, focus on a nice little niche and I think it will work.

ecchi · 2010-04-08, 02:48 AM

Four things to note:
1: Most board surfers are just lurkers, you will need a hell of a lot of traffic to make this work. If you cannot feed it several hundred surfers a day from your other sites, wait until you can.
2: Remember you will have to post a lot yourself to start with, to chivvy on the genuine posters.
3: Keep a good eye on spam, and delete it instantly. Nothing kills a board faster than spam, people just go elsewhere. For the first few months, possibly longer, you are going to have to check it several times a day, every day. If you cannot do that (eg. you got a day job, your religion forbids you working certain days, you are planning a holiday within the next few months, etc.) you need a business partner to cover for you. Also note that the world does not all sleep at the same time, if you are one of those people who needs a solid 8 hours a night, you are going to need someone to check while you snore, or you will wake up to find your board full of spam for Russian rape sites!
4: Check that your server has a powerful enough kit to run a forum. The main thing you have to look at is the amount of processing a forum requires, not the bandwidth. A basic server cannot handle this, and one of my favourite boards died when it got popular and the regulars buggered off because each page load took too long due to the server not able to process quickly enough.

mountaineer · 2010-04-08, 02:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hincapie

Had some in the ancient past - these days though, most surfer forums I come across are full of links to torrents/rapidshare full movies and the like.

However, if you find a nice little niche to focus on, its probably still possible.

I am going to be looking for a nice niche sponsor that has some good galleries or tube clips I can use.

Quote:

Originally Posted by terry

Go for it - but be careful with spammers and focus on seo. As hincapie said, focus on a nice little niche and I think it will work.

I was thinking about picking a niche then have three sub forums that get more specific in to that niche like micro-niche. I don't want 10 empty forums.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ecchi

Four things to note:
1: Most board surfers are just lurkers, you will need a hell of a lot of traffic to make this work. If you cannot feed it several hundred surfers a day from your other sites, wait until you can.
2: Remember you will have to post a lot yourself to start with, to chivvy on the genuine posters.
3: Keep a good eye on spam, and delete it instantly. Nothing kills a board faster than spam, people just go elsewhere. For the first few months, possibly longer, you are going to have to check it several times a day, every day. If you cannot do that (eg. you got a day job, your religion forbids you working certain days, you are planning a holiday within the next few months, etc.) you need a business partner to cover for you. Also note that the world does not all sleep at the same time, if you are one of those people who needs a solid 8 hours a night, you are going to need someone to check while you snore, or you will wake up to find your board full of spam for Russian rape sites!
4: Check that your server has a powerful enough kit to run a forum. The main thing you have to look at is the amount of processing a forum requires, not the bandwidth. A basic server cannot handle this, and one of my favourite boards died when it got popular and the regulars buggered off because each page load took too long due to the server not able to process quickly enough.

I am on shared hosting through netwisp so I am not sure what it can handle. I guess I can have em upgrade me to a different package if things start to get bad. I already have a lot of things installed though.

I will make 3-4 accounts and post from them all to make it look like I have a few members to start with I guess.

I know about the spam I tried to run a sports forum end of last year before my business got too busy for me to keep up with it and I had so much viagra spam I was starting to get good SE traffic from it lol..

I guess I will try to keep it simple with lots of content jumping out at you and maybe some people will sign-up or bookmark it.

Thanks again for all of the posts.

2010-04-04, 12:42 AM	#1
mountaineer Aw, Dad, you've done a lot of great things, but you're a very old man, and old people are useless Join Date: Feb 2010 Posts: 23	Making a surfer forum? I have an IP Board setting on my server with arcade and all installed. Has anyone played around with surfer forums? I don't mean gfy either. j/k Thanks

2010-04-04, 09:51 PM	#2
hincapie You can now put whatever you want in this space :) Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Cyprus Posts: 963	Had some in the ancient past - these days though, most surfer forums I come across are full of links to torrents/rapidshare full movies and the like. However, if you find a nice little niche to focus on, its probably still possible. __________________ Hinc Linklists/TGPs: Adult List Loasex.com

2010-04-05, 09:06 AM	#3
terry You can now put whatever you want in this space :) Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Montreal Posts: 5,883	Go for it - but be careful with spammers and focus on seo. As hincapie said, focus on a nice little niche and I think it will work. __________________ Stop That 9 To 5 Go Green Grocery Store

2010-04-08, 02:48 AM	#4
ecchi Banned Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: About to be evicted!!!! Posts: 4,082	Four things to note: 1: Most board surfers are just lurkers, you will need a hell of a lot of traffic to make this work. If you cannot feed it several hundred surfers a day from your other sites, wait until you can. 2: Remember you will have to post a lot yourself to start with, to chivvy on the genuine posters. 3: Keep a good eye on spam, and delete it instantly. Nothing kills a board faster than spam, people just go elsewhere. For the first few months, possibly longer, you are going to have to check it several times a day, every day. If you cannot do that (eg. you got a day job, your religion forbids you working certain days, you are planning a holiday within the next few months, etc.) you need a business partner to cover for you. Also note that the world does not all sleep at the same time, if you are one of those people who needs a solid 8 hours a night, you are going to need someone to check while you snore, or you will wake up to find your board full of spam for Russian rape sites! 4: Check that your server has a powerful enough kit to run a forum. The main thing you have to look at is the amount of processing a forum requires, not the bandwidth. A basic server cannot handle this, and one of my favourite boards died when it got popular and the regulars buggered off because each page load took too long due to the server not able to process quickly enough.