A guide to starting your own forum: Part 1 of 4
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by Reid under Make Money OnlineI returned from Florida late last night. I had a great vacation and would love to live where I stayed. Unfortunately, the internet connection there was horrible and I was unable to go online for more than a few minutes at a time before the connection would cut out again. I will be sending out the prizes for the contest this afternoon. Unfortunately, only 1/3 of the winners actually claimed their prizes. If you didn’t claim or didn’t win, don’t worry. There will be another contest soon to give out the leftover prizes plus some more prizes which I will get for you soon.
I’ve read a few posts on forums such as Blog Premiere asking about advice for starting a forum. For many people, starting a forum is confusing. In my opinion, starting a forum isn’t complicated, but it will require a lot of dedication and hard work to get started. I will be writing a three part series on how to start a forum. This guide will tell you everything you need to know to start your own forum. I am a vBulletin tech, so I have setup and modified many popular forums in the past. I am planning to start my very own forums soon, so I will be blogging on that shortly as well. This guide will start off with the basics and move onto the more important stuff in parts 2 and 3.
Picking out a domain for your forum:
One of the trickiest parts of starting a forum in my opinion is finding a good domain. With domainers picking up a lot of domains and holding them, this can be tricky. When you want to pick out a domain for your forum, I strongly recommend you get a .com domain, if you can’t get a .com domain, go for a .org domain. I’m planning a few forums, and found some very nice domains, but had to go with a .org domain. Don’t worry, .org domains generally do just find. Do not buy a .info, .in, or any other crappy TLD domain as you will be shooting yourself in the foot. You can buy your domains from GoDaddy, but I strongly recommend NameCheap as they offer free WHOISGuard protection.
I have a few domains I will always check first when I’m thinking of a forum name. First of all I always check the domain ending in forum/forums, such as AviationForum.com, or TechForums.com. Normally these will be taken buy you can always email the owner and see if he’s willing to sell (see next part). Then I move onto checking other domains that are short but suit the topic well. If you want to buy a domain for a forum, try checking for available domains in this list that would suit you.
www._________forum.com
www.——–forums.com
www.——–spot.com
www.——–central.com
www.total———.com
www.———zone.com
Basically, check your topic of the forum with a simple word at the end. Don’t try and make your name so fancy that its hard to spell or remember. Some of the domains I own include TechCentral.org, TotalAviation.org, WebmasterSpot.com and DetailersEdge.org. As you can see, all of these domains consist of 2 words and are easy to remember.
Domain taken? Attempting to buy an already owned domain.
Sometimes you will think of a domain that would be perfect for your forum. You check NameCheap to find that the domain is already taken and that there is no live site on that domain. At this point, I’d highly recommend you try and contact the current domain owner and see if he wants to sell the domain. To do this, visit Whois.sc and enter the domain which you want to buy. If the domain is not protected by WHOISGuard, it will bring up the owners contact information. Send him/her an email and hope that you can negotiate a good price.
A Word About Backordering Domains:
A while back I was talking to a friend about a domain I wanted to acquire. He told me I should backorder the domain with Godaddy.com for $19.99 so that I’d get it when it expired. I strongly advise you to not use Godaddy’s backorder system, you are very unlikely to get the domain that way. Basically, each registrar gets is allocated a certain number of servers to ping the ICANN database to try and catch the domain as they drop. You are much more likely to get the domain by backordering the domain with Pool.com for free (you pay $60 once you actually get the domain) or SnapNames.com These registrars have far more servers than Godaddy, and thus a better chance at getting you the domain. Remember, it is likely cheaper to try and contact the owner of the domain first as sometimes domains are registered and the owner will keep renewing them.
Stay tuned for part 2 of 4 which will talk your options for forum software and content management systems. I will also let you in on a great quality hosting deal.
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May 20th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
This will be an interesting series of posts. I am the founder of a very successful forum community. You are right it takes lots of dedication and hard work in the beginning, but it will also take hard work and dedication for some time to come.
I have found very beneficial to “employ” friends and others that share your same passion about your subject as you do.
Regards
May 20th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Wait? I don’t get the prize for the contest? Why not? You said you would email the details. I never got an email to help me claim my prize of the fruitful time software!
May 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
I think your part 1 of “A guide to starting your own forum” should have mentioned that you should only start a forum on a topic that you are passionate about. In my experience forums are a ton of work and will not pay out all that well, at least to start with. If you are not into the forum topic you will get burned out quickly as you will be doing a lot of work for very little return. Passion about the forum topic is what will help you work through these frustrated times!
Good post, I’m looking forward to the other parts.
May 21st, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Hi,
Sorry, but what experiences do you have in this area (starting up forums)?
It just seems to me like you are pretty new in this online ‘world’ (I might be wrong)…
- Only a shadow
May 21st, 2008 at 2:08 pm
@ The Shadow - I’ve been working as a vBulletin tech for a year and a bit now. Thats what got me onto making money online. I’ve worked on quite a few other forums and now I’m planning to start my own after seeing some forums earning half a million + a year just off paid advertising.
@ Nathaniel - Of course you do, I will be sending it off shortly. Just have to get the product keys off my backup drive. I formatted since the start of the contest.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Good writing about the backordering domain system offered by GoDaddy. I think that it does work, but the $20 is more of a deposit than anything else. As far as I’ve heard, the cost usually works out to something like $250 for the domain
May 25th, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Thanks Reid for the prize. I was able to enter the product key. Now something about the post.
I like the advice, I am actually thinking of creating a forum, and your advice is useful.
Something about the .org, it is supposed to be a nonprofit organization, for that is what it means. It may not be good to refer somebody to somethinbg that is supposed to be nonprofit, maybe you should go with a second choice of .net
May 28th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Great advice for starting a forum. Im inclined to agree with Nathaniel about .org’s but I really believe this was the original goal of this domain but has really been dilluted in the past 20 years to where it does not matter. Would be interesting to see what the general consensus of the public at large is, or even godaddy.com
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June 18th, 2008 at 6:27 am
I think you are forgetting so much that the best url practice for forum is something like this: http://www.website.com/forum. It’s always better than doing a forum.[site].com