ForumSpark Support

As a forum owner, I’m sure you know and realize that you have to also be a marketer to get your forum out there enough to grow.

The question is: Do you like marketing enough to make it work for you?

If you don’t like it, you’re likely not going to dedicate enough effort to making it work. Things will fail, and you will feel like a failure and thus give up more easily.

So, are you into marketing enough to make it work?

Why did you migrate from one forum platform to another?

What things were missing from the first platform that the other had? Did expense play a part?

What are some of your favorite events on your forums to get activity going?

What success stories do we know about forums that closed and then re-opened? Is it rare? What makes it a success story?

I've been checking my small forum analytics and honestly it's not encouraging. You create threads, reply yourself sometimes, even share links on WhatsApp groups. I even boosted one post with $50 last month thinking it would attract crowd. It was just three people that registered and one was probably a spam bot from India. i’m starting to believe the first 100 members don't usually come from ads but from disturbing your friends personally.

Everyone’s got a story. Maybe it was a niche you were passionate about, or maybe you just wanted to build a community from scratch. What got you into forums in the first place?

If a forum owner offered you a paid community manager position, what would you provide as the community manager?

Feel free to list the amounts of pay versus what sort of services you would provide.

For example, I used to get paid $1,000 a month to be a CM for a very popular copywriting blog. I would post an interesting topic daily, engage with members daily, post an article weekly, and do a live Zoom accountability meeting monthly. To me, that was well worth the $1K.

So, for how much would you provide, and what would you provide, as the Community Manager on a forum?

How often do you change themes on your forum?

Do you ask your members before you change a theme, or do you assume they’ll like the change and do it without asking?

Do you think many admins want change more than actual members when it comes to different forum themes?

If you’re thinking of joining Admin Banner and you need a banner that’s 728×90, I’m willing to create one free for the next 5 people who are going to sign up on Admin Banner and have a Forum Spark community. Just message me and give me the details 🙂

And if you want to take a crack at making your own banner, my friend @Jay says that Claude AI can do that now! Upload your logo, what you want to say and tell it size and colors and you should get good results!

In general, what features are most forum platforms missing?

What would make forums way better?

What are your fears about migrating to a new platform?

What would make you want to quit forums altogether?

Have you ever taken a break from them?

Have you ever dealt with a member who threatens to hurt or kill themselves on your forum?

What did you do as a response?

If this hasn’t happened to you, how would you react?

What do you think about AI and forums?

Do you think the two can work together? Could AI actually make forums more popular again?

Or do you think AI could be the total death of forums?

What motivates you to keep running your forum?

Is it your community or something else?

Why do you keep logging onto your forum each day and maintaining it?

I often browse the Web Archive to find inspiration for themes, graphics, and just the overall nostalgic vibe of the early 2010s. Themes for example were so much more vibrant back then. Partly because the internet itself was different, but also because there seemed to be so many more people interested in creating things. Over the last 10 years or so, a lot of that slowly disappeared. Everything became flatter, cleaner, more minimal... but also, in my opinion, a lot more soulless and boring.

Maybe I’m just stuck in the past, but I really enjoy revisiting old websites and their designs and trying to create something inspired by them in a more modern way. What I make is never perfect, but I’m trying to bring back a little of that old-school vibe while having fun in the process. If something I create sparks someone else’s interest, gives them some inspiration, or someone simply gets some use out of the effort I put into it, then that already makes it worthwhile.

I definitely feel like the internet, and the people on it, have changed over the years. Somewhere along the way it feels like we lost a bit of that creativity, personality, and willingness to just make cool stuff for the sake of making it.

In what ways do you show appreciation for your members?

I checked one forum that we manage voluntarily and I noticed that the moderators are barely active again. The truth is that volunteer jobs on forum don't always work. You can't motivate people with just a "thank you" forever. Sometimes little recognition helps. Giving them voice in decision making and showing appreciation publicly is very important.

Have you ever had to ban someone from your forum that you truly liked?

Why did you have to resort to banning?

Did you ever try to reverse it or was the damage already done?

When it comes to listening to what your members want, do you do what the loudest, but few voices want?

Sometimes the mods behave like they are kings. They delete posts, lock threads with no explanation. Then later you find out that it was a mistake. Personally, I feel if a mistake happens publicly, they need to own it publicly too. It is as simple as that. There is no need to hide behind the admin curtain. If people start feeling that moderation is not transparent again, trust will vanish very quickly and it might be the end of that forum.
:D

I was literally rearranging my forum categories because the whole place was looking so rough. There are too many sections everywhere and half of them are empty. I think few broad categories make more sense especially when the community is still very small. One forum i joined recently had like 40 categories but activity was weak.

I was checking one new forum yesterday and the first thing I saw was “Introduce Yourself Here.” does anybody truly enjoy that thing again? Most people just type “hello i'm new here” and disappear forever. People now prefer entering hot gist immediately instead of formal introductions. Attention span has reduced badly.

What's your experience with using paid to click websites? Some years ago, they used to be very popular because so many people try to earn from using those sites. Over the years, their popularity have dropped so badly.

How much do you rate click websites?

With how technology advancement have improved over the years, one of the negative sides it made common is in the area of online scams and cybercrime activities. People lose million of dollars to scammers on different platforms.

Have you ever been scammed online?