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Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run a Successful Community Discussion Board: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards SPE Edition
Author(s): Patrick O'Keefe (Author)
- Publisher: AMACOM
- Publication Date: 19 July 2018
- Edition: SPE
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 081440197X
- ISBN-13: 9780814401972
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"I feel that Managing Online Forums is a worthwhile book to buy and absorb. There are TONS of great resources in there, and lots of real world examples for you to follow. This alone makes the book a great resource to have on the shelf." --Chris Brogan
"If you are thinking of starting a community, or are newly involved in one, this book will help you in the human side of managing the site." --Online Magazine
"While Managing Online Forums is obviously aimed at forum hosts and moderators, it can also be used to educate a general audience about online forum activity." --Book News, Inc./SciTech News
"In his book Managing Online Forums, Patrick O'Keefe provides thoughtful, detailed recommendations on developing and enforcing guidelines based on running several thriving communities." --Lois Kelly, author of Beyond Buzz (http: //blog.foghound.com/383/)
From the Back Cover
If you’re running an online community, you know how satisfying, fun and exciting it can be, especially if you’re in charge of a popular site where people come to discuss their favorite hobbies, movies, music and news. But you also know that there’s a flip side to being the gatekeeper of a discussion board. Difficult users, legal constraints, spammers, and technical issues can turn the excitement of running an online community into total chaos. With the right guidance, however, running forums can be a pleasure. Patrick O’Keefe has spent years developing and managing online communities. Now, he shows you how to make the right decisions about every aspect of your site. Managing Online Forums is the first comprehensive book to cover everything you need to know to launch and run a community forum, including:
conceptualizing the community and launching it • attracting people to the community • choosing a name and domain name • picking the right software • deciding on user options like avatars and private messaging • setting guidelines and dealing with violators • ensuring that posts stay on topic • settling online disputes among users • involving your users and keeping the site interesting
Unique, lively, and timely, Managing Online Forums is the one book that shows you how to create a safe and entertaining community that users will return to again and again.
“O’Keefe provides an impressively insightful, comprehensive, and cogent blueprint for building a loyal and responsive community online.”
--Ryan Leslie, Founder, NextSelection Lifestyle Group, recording artist,producer, and online video pioneer.
“Patrick is one of the true leaders in online community building, and his knowledge isn’t just theoretical, it is based on “in the trenches” experience—and those experiences will prove invaluable as you look to leverage community in your endeavors.”
--Jeremy Wright, CEO, b5media,and author, Blog Marketing
Online forums make up the very foundation of the social web. Unfortunately, there are few resources for the growing number of people who work behind the scenes to make them successful. In this comprehensive book, Patrick O'Keefe brings his real world experiences to bear in the form of strategies, tactics and ideas that fill a knowledge gap that has begged to be filled for too long.
-- Lee LeFever, Common Craft
Patrick O’Keefe is the founder and owner of the iFroggy Network (ifroggy.com), an internet network featuring content, community and e-commerce sites. He also manages 7 communities, including SportsForums.net, KarateForums.com, phpBBHacks.com, CommunityAdmins.com and PhotoshopForums.com,. He blogs about community management at ManagingCommunities.com and has written articles and editorials for several websites, including YanksBlog.com and BadBoyBlog.com. He lives in Harbinger, NC
About the Author
Patrick O'Keefe (Harbinger, NC) is the owner of iFroggy Network, an Internet network of content, community, and e-commerce sites covering various interests. He currently manages seven separate online communities and has developed communities that have become some of the largest on their subject matter in the world.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
MANAGING ONLINE FORUMS
Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion BoardsBy Patrick O'Keefe
AMACOM
Copyright © 2008 Patrick O'Keefe
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8144-0197-2
Contents
Acknowledgments.....................................................xviiForeword............................................................xxiIntroduction: Is This Book for You?.................................1Chapter 1. Laying the Groundwork....................................7Chapter 2. Developing Your Community................................17Chapter 3. Developing Guidelines....................................59Chapter 4. Promoting Your Community.................................91Chapter 5. Managing Your Staff......................................117Chapter 6. Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos.....................181Chapter 7. Creating a Good Environment..............................219Chapter 8. Keeping It Interesting...................................229Chapter 9. Making Money.............................................245End Note............................................................261Appendix A. Online Resources........................................263Appendix B. Blank General Templates.................................265Appendix C. Glossary................................................283Index...............................................................289About the Author....................................................297
Chapter One
Laying the Groundwork
"The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you're willing to pay the price."
—Vince Lombardi
To start your community off right, you must have your mind in the right place. You should know what your community is, what you are trying to accomplish, what you'll need to do to accomplish it, and you need to ensure that you can provide the community with the stability that it needs to flourish long into the future. This chapter gives you an idea of what to expect and will help you to make some of those important, initial decisions.
Fundamental Decisions
Before launching your community, inevitably there are some decisions to make or, at least, some things that you should think about that will help determine your community's existence. Some of them will affect most everything that you do from this point forward, from decisions you make to any work that you do.
What Will Your Community Cover?
Although a general, discuss-basically-anything community is always an option, chances are that you want to focus on some specific subject or niche, even if it is fairly general.
Whether it's programming (or just a specific programming language), sports (or just football), writing (or just nonfiction), you'll need to determine what subject will be the focus of your community. You don't want to try to be everything to everyone. You want to do what you do—and do it well.
Whatever the subject, it is usually not important that you be an expert on it or even know it all that well—the most important thing is that you are committed to it and to your community.
For instance, I own KarateForums.com (an active martial arts discussion community) and PhotoshopForums.com (an active Photoshop help and discussion community). I've never done any martial arts, and when I started PhotoshopForums.com, I had never even used Photoshop (a kind user sent me a—yes, legal—copy of Photoshop Elements a bit later). Again, you don't need to know about the subject matter as long as you are committed to the idea. I started these communities for various reasons. Besides random revelations, I sensed a need, saw that a good domain name was available, and thought that I could do it better than anyone else—and not just talk about it but actually do it.
You can surround yourself with smart people (or people smarter than you) on your staff of whom you can ask questions relevant to the subject of your community, on those (perhaps rare) occasions where it will be needed. Don't get me wrong, being passionate about the subject of your community can be very helpful and may help ensure your passion for the community itself (and, as such, your long-term interest and enjoyment in your work, which is very important).
But, I'll say it again: Have passion for the community. If you have it, you can succeed. If you have passion for the subject, but no passion for the community or for running the community, you really don't have very much at all and you're in for a struggle.
Whom Do You Want to Attract?
Even a community that is for "everyone" really isn't for everyone because by nature, a community for everyone will turn certain people off. Make sense? What type of users are you after?
This doesn't have to be that specific. But visualizing it can help you to make decisions and plot a course. For instance, you can simply target anyone interested in having a baby—or you can target pregnant mothers under the age of twenty-five. You can target baseball fans—or fans of the New York Yankees. You can target computer users—or you can target users of a certain operating system. Does your community target a specific age group or gender? Are you looking for users who are experts in your subject matter? Or beginners? Attempting to bring them both together? Whomever you target, you'll want to develop your community with them in mind.
You will probably (and naturally) attract people outside of your targeted audience, and chances are that'll be perfectly OK with you. But having your primary audience or audiences in mind will help you to make appropriate decisions about your community.
What Will the Benefits of Your Community Be?
How will you attract people to your community? What will make them come? And stay? These can be few or many—tangible or intangible. You can help people or provide them with useful information, you can provide a friendly atmosphere or an exclusive atmosphere, you can give them direct access to your company—you can do a lot of things. The things that make you interesting, unique, different, and special—those will be your key benefits.
Assuming it exists, you can learn from your "competition." What are they doing well? What are they doing poorly that you can improve on? What are they missing that you can provide? How are they different from you? The limitations of your competition can be inspirational.
How Will You Support the Community Financially?
Before you jump headfirst into anything, you should think about the money it will take to support your community and keep it online. Sit down and figure out how much it will cost you to keep the community running at an optimal level for the foreseeable future, and plan for that figure to increase. Simply put: Will you be able to support it?
If you would like the community to pay for itself or even turn a profit (or a great profit), how are you going to do that? Advertising? Affiliate programs? Donations? Will you eventually embrace some sort of subscription model where people pay for enhanced options in your community? Chapter 9 will assist you in your efforts.
The bottom line is that you do not want to start your community only to realize in a few months that you are not comfortable with the amount of money that it takes to...
