YoungL

Whenever I contact a member on my board I usually add my staff to the PM using the "add recipient" option. (Keeps everyone in the loop) It would be nice to have an "add group." option.

There's a hidden setting. You need to open your conf_global.php file, and add this line:

$INFO['nexus_reports_start_year'] = 2009;

Change "2009" to whatever you want the "start year" to be.


Now that being said, I don't recall off the top of my head when this was added - if it doesn't work, submit a support ticket and I can take a look for you

Honestly, you can control who can use the system, exempting groups who can be reported simply smells of "I'm too powerful to be reported, bow before my group in submission".
:/

If I were a member of your forum, I think I'd be happy to have my account deleted.

Chadi, on 11 April 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

I think the boards will continue having a important role on communities, social medias are for general things, the boards have an important role on specific subjects, like games, tecnology, etc. I think the boards don't must compete with social medias, but can be complemented with that. The social medias today works very fine like RSS.

If you have a great content you will work WITH the social medias, not AGAINST.

Forums are websites where people come to please their minds. So if you have a forum or your setting one up content is your number one concern. But what is content?


The three main versions of forum content:

1. Content can be a platform to share your work or views.
2. Content can be information to help you.
3. Content can be entertainment.

Often I find forums or websites that have no content. No basis to really share my work or views, no helpful information, either none at all or information I can find anywhere else. Or no entertainment/no entertainment I can't find anywhere else. So if you want to have a successful forum then you need to fill at least one of these fields.

Number 1 is the hardest for most people unless you can feed a lot of traffic to the site that will attract people to share content.

Number 2 and number 3 are easier, they are similar but not the same thing. Some people get confused, a lot of people come to forums just to get information like how to be really good at playing a game. How to fix a common software fault etc.

So if your forum is pointed towards a niche where people want helpful information from it. Your number one concern before forum software, look, promotion etc is how to offer unique #2 content for that niche.

If your forum isn't really a niche eg gaming then your probably better focusing on entertainment but it might be a good idea to also offer a lot of useful unique information on a niche. Some gaming forums start with a clan that you can join into or people who are good with games and can offer a lot of advice with games.

This might seem really obvious but this could help some people. Without one of these three points your forum will not succeed. If you cannot offer these points but have the technical ability to set up a good looking forum, try getting some people to come with you that can produce this content.


My site currently has 220,000 posts, 9000 members, 4,700 twitter followers and 4,900 facebook likes. My niche is a certain football club. I've got into this position by offering good helpful information on the team, helpful facts, good views, a place so they can share their views with other people(be social). I've also offered a lot of multimedia for the niche, graphics and videos. So I've offered a lot of different aspects of content then I've promoted it and made it really easy to get, view and use with good forum layout, good software, plugins and look.

You can never have enough content, try to pace out your content(it's not easy). If you burst out loads of content in one day, a lot of it might be missed and people will then be left with no content for eg the rest of the week. If you have big gaps between content then people won't use your forum. Try to offer content at peak times and make sure there is plenty of content for people to consume daily.

I never point my members to social media networks. While they are aware that they exist, the members on my site are longtime supporters of my community. They use Facebook and Twitter but that Facebook and Twitter doesn't replace the forum experience because all they are is a networking community. It's just "networking" and networking is just connecting with other people. Facebook has tried to create a "forum-like" experience but they've failed miserable at creating that.

Facebook tries too hard to be a forum-like experience and they fail miserably at that. With forum communities that run IPB, vBulletin or whatever, they are not pretending to be social networks or status update sites like Twitter. This is why message forums have survived as long as it has and why it will always be around. Just look at one of the original BBS', ISCABBS, which has existed since the late 1980's. The BBS, Message Board or Message Forum experience will never die out. There may be new forum software that replace what has come before, but the forum experience will continue to exist, as it has existed longer than Facebook has and still continues to exist to this very day.

It's interesting to me to read topics like this as I look at things a bit differently from the perspective at IPS. I posted earlier in this topic about our own internal business of course.

However I also see impact on clients I advise. I have spoken to many clients who had a fear of Facebook/Twitter/etc. and who were surprised when I strongly suggested they embrace those networks. I am a huge proponent of leveraging this networks to bring traffic to your own community that you control. A place where you control the experience, the branding, the advertising, and can (if it's a business) monetize the experience.

Every single time a client has come back to me later and said they have seen a marked increase in user traffic and such when they stopped giving traffic away to other networks. When they stopped fearing them and instead used them to their own advantage.

Just to throw this out there for fun....


"5 years"  will be 2017... The worlds going to end  Dec 21, 2012... So I guess forums, Facebook, twitter, etc... Will all be gone by then...