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[NintendosBooger]

I'm on the verge of starting my own website (not game related), along with a forum to go with it, and since this is such a rich and diverse community, I was wondering if the members here could impart with some advice as to how to do just that.

More importantly, I'm more concerned with the amount of money and time it would take to create a good forum, much like this one. First, how long has this forum been around, and was it always this active? Also, I've been told that patience is essential, so how long would it normally take for a site to be active up to the minute (with advertising, word of mouth, etc. etc.)

Any advice would be cool

 

[Dyne]

Hiya.

I helped out with a website community years ago as a starter. The main pages were never finished by the owner, but as an Administrator of it, I helped create a pretty hopping community.

It does take a LOT of effort. If you want to use vB like here, you have to pay about $80 for a licence for a year. I think it's really worth it though. I had a lot of fun hacking it. But again, it took a lot of maintenance when things broke down.

That said, the only real, legal way to advertise was to make good friends a little bit everywhere, and then bribe them with positions. In this effect, they'll tell their friends, and the chain starts. The psychology behind this is that staff want people to come to the website so they can moderate them. I ended up making about 10 people mods, and within six months, I had 1000 members.

I currently work for another site as an admin, because the other site was cut off and unpaid for. The owner ran out of money. :lol It was cut off two christmas's ago with about 2,500 members with no zero-posters. I was devasted because I put so much work into it, but I'm glad it came to an end.

At my new site, we don't need to plan to refer people anymore. They just come. That's a sign of success. It was mentioned on IGN a few times, so I guess that helps things a little.

Oh, and look over vBulletin.org if you do decide to get vB. There's a ton of hacks on there I've done, and they're all cool things to have. People like unique sites. I recommend the Arcade, but it's a tiny bit of work.

-Dyne