fdk

Hello all, Thought I'd make a thread to share one of my own personal tips from many years of running a successful forum, with relatively few moderation issues in comparison and a generally happy memberbase. So, a member posts a new thread, but there's just one problem - they've posted a thread on a topic that's already being discussed elsewhere, potentially multiple times. In such a situation, many moderators or admins resort to locking the newer thread, and directing the member to the existing thread. Why do I consider this to be (generally) bad practice? Simply put, taking moderation action like this against members feels punitive in nature, despite your best intentions and despite what you may say in the post you make when locking the thread. A member seeing the thread they took time (however little) to make being locked is discouraging, and is more likely to dissuade them from posting another thread or adding another contribution in the future. OK fdk, that means sense. But what's the alternative? Just let all these threads pile up? No, absolutely not! Take advantage of the "merge" feature that is built into all (if not almost all) major forum software packages. Instead of locking the newer thread, merge the thread into the existing thread. Perhaps consider leaving a temporary redirect in place in case the poster of the newer thread goes back to look for it. Alternatively, consider sending them a PM informing them gently that there was already a topic about what they posted on, so you've merged the topics together, and send them a link. In my experience, this greatly increases the chance the member will continue to contribute to your forum, it greatly reduces the chance they will be unhappy with moderation action taken on their post, and while it may be just a few extra seconds work for your moderator/admin team, it's absolutely worth keeping your memberbase happy in my opinion! Please feel free to share your own thoughts, and look out for more short fdk topical tips in the future. :)

I have mentioned elsewhere that I had a great experience using Google Ads many years ago when growing my biggest forum. I saw a 300% return on my investment that I was able to track was purely through users gained through the advertising campaign over the course of just over a year, which I was very happy with. At times with my biggest forum, our costs amounted to in excess of $2,000 a month. That being said, our income always exceeded this, and on occasions exceeded it significantly, so it was a worthwhile spend. In terms of a potential new project I'm thinking of, my budget would be limited by what I thought offered value for money. I mean, sure I don't have $10,000 to put in at once, but if the project was right and I truly believed in it, I'd be willing to invest $1,000+ over the course of some months if I was building a viable business opportunity.

I unfortunately have first hand experience of this, having received an offer I couldn't refuse for a forum I used to run about 10 years ago. Inevitably, it was bought, carried on running very well for a year, maybe a little bit more, and then started on its slow but steady decline. Went from a forum getting hundreds of new registrations a week to getting a handful per month along with maybe 100 posts a month if that, and was promptly closed by the person who bought it about a year later. The guy paid a considerable five figure sum for the site aswell, and I'd have happily purchased it back off him for a large chunk of what he paid me for it... quite why he allowed it to slide into such a decline, I don't know.

I have known some that do it - if it is adding content and is building a base for real members to engage, then I don't think it's an absolute no. I haven't done it myself personally, but others have pointed out that it's not a million miles away from post exchanges or buying forum posts/packages for your site. If you have the time, in fact, it probably works out an awful lot cheaper even if you considered paying yourself the money you would've spent on content... idk. I definitely wouldn't see a purpose in continuing the practice beyond the first week or two of your forum opening - the only time I can see this being useful is literally right at the inception of a new forum. Otherwise, it seems a bit silly to me.

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Just been listening to some Central Cee - if you're a fan of British rap, it's well worth a listen. This is one of his best tracks, imo:

Having Google'd "PHP is dead", I very much now get the joke lol That's a fantastic meme! :ROFLMAO:

Back when I run forums 10+ years ago, the ability of admins to require strong passwords from members was somewhat limited. If I recall, you could specify minimum password lengths, but that was about it, and obviously people would be annoyed if the minimum was set too high. On the forum I ran that got particularly popular, we had so many password issues that an administrator had to be hired to deal with account recovery and password help requests from members, which was kind of frustrating. Luckily it seems nowadays that much of this functionality is built into forum software, and 2FA has made things so much easier too. I definitely wouldn't be hiring an admin to solely work on account recovery if I was running a forum nowadays, unless I had literally millions of members!

I've never had to sack a member of staff on any of my websites. I've had staff have to step down for personal reasons, and I've removed somebody once who suddenly went inactive and never returned (after extensively attempting to contact them both online and on their mobile, unfortunately never found out if they were OK), but never had to sack somebody. I suppose it comes down a lot to your vetting processes before agreeing to take somebody on in the first place. If you carry out an appropriate check and are happy and trusting of the person you're inviting onto your staff team, I can't really see any occasions where it would become necessary to sack a member of staff. I've had staff make plenty of mistakes, including some that caused quite some undoing and mediation to resolve, but I always felt that they were attempting to act in the best interests of everybody and their mistakes were honest ones, so I support them and advise on ways to manage things differently in the future in a kind way.

Can you elaborate a bit? What makes PHP dead? Interested to know what you've found out! :ROFLMAO:

This is a great, well-written, well-thought out and informative guide, thanks very much for sharing it [mention=5]Cpvr[/mention] In fact, it is so well-written and makes such a persuasive case for why Reddit is an ideal community to recruit members, I wonder if [mention=1]Cedric[/mention] has considered the possibility of using Reddit in an attempt to garner some further interest and more signups here at Administrata? It seems like it could be a viable option to me if he has the time to invest in joining and participating in a few subreddits. :)

Thanks to everybody who has contacted me so far, I've taken the time to reply to each of you individually. I'm going to leave this open for another day or two to give others a chance to get in touch. If you haven't already sent me an outline proposal and you're interested, please send me a brief proposal via PM. I'll choose somebody to work with and we'll negotiate terms before the weekend is up. :)

(WARNING: Explicit language) Discovered this a few years ago, loved it. (WARNING: Explicit language)

The first forums I ran, the staff were volunteers and didn't receive any form of payment. The only perks they really received were an additional rate of forum points they earned when participating on the forums. In my large forum, when I eventually hired additional administrators, I paid them a small sum each month for their efforts. Usually around 25% of the sites' revenue for the month divided between the 3 of them, but frequently it was $100+ or so each. The Moderators were volunteers, but received increased forum currency for participating, and several of our volunteer staff received interest-free loans from us over the years for things like buying new computers.

My personal opinion is that it depends completely on the situation at hand. If it's a minor rule/guideline violation, like posting in an incorrect area, it's completely fine to move the post, and add a post briefly explaining that you've moved it to the correct area and ask the member gently to review the area they're posting in next time. If I felt the need a more formal warning was required, or even a ban, that action would never take place in public view. If a warning was issued, the member would receive a PM with details. This PM, and the fact that a warning was issued, is only known to staff. The offending post/content would be edited or removed. If a ban was issued, an email would be sent with details, including an end date if applicable, and details of an appeal process. None of these things should be done in public view, imo.

I like to use sarcasm to insult somebody slyly if I really can't contain my feelings, but usually I can. Something like "oh my word, that's such an amazing idea, I have no idea why I didn't think of that" is vague enough to be reasonably considered to be praise, but also can be used extremely sarcastically if needed. The alternative is to be ultra-patronising to somebody who is frustrating you. Example: "I can completely understand why you might feel that way, your feelings are valid! However, I don't agree for the following reasons, so..."

I have taken the final spot and will finish up this request. I've added your estimated date of completion to the above post too, it's currently December 13. Thanks! EDIT: Estimated date of completion updated to December 13. :)

When I first began to run forums many years ago, I did initially do some post exchanges. I quickly found that, at least at that time, the quality of the exchanges was generally not great, as people were rushing them to get more in and make their forums appear more active. Once I had closed my first two or three experimental forums, I stopped doing exchanges, and seemed to have more success in running forums without needing to do post exchanges. I just concentrated my time more on ensuring that I was available to engage in my own community. When my biggest forum closed, it had little over 20million posts, 400,000 or so of which were by me. That's quite a big number, sure, but overall, it's only 2% of posts. Given that some of those posts were automated ones made for things like moderation actions too, it's not bad. So yeah, generally, I'd say it's better to focus your time on posting and building content on your own community. That being said, there are some circumstances where post exchanges absolutely offer value - in particular niches, or if you really struggle for ideas on content to add to your forum yourself. :)

Welcome to Administrata, [mention=139]Nebulous[/mention] Hope you enjoy the forum and the resources available. The directory has been particularly entertaining for me to go through slowly when I have some spare time. :)

Great summary, thanks for that! I've always been amazed at the functionality offered by WordPress, and in no doubt that is mainly thanks to the developers of plug-ins. Without them, everything our charity does for example would be absolutely impossible. We use a lot of the free plug-ins and a fair few ones that we've had custom-made, but as it is not my area generally to deal with the website maintenance I don't have full details. Nevertheless, the work we do would be so much more complicated and ultimately would mean we were able to help a lot less people. I'm glad to hear that access has been, or should be, restored to the previous state imminently. Hopefully the upcoming legal action will cause all parties to reflect and decide that an amicable resolution is best for all parties, both in terms of reputation and also financially.

I can't quite believe that I've not heard about this issue until reading through this thread this morning. I work for a charity and we use WordPress for our whole website, which has millions of visitors each year. If something happens to WordPress, it would have the potential to severely affect our operations - we wouldn't have the funding in place to be able to pay £100,000+ to a professional website development company to rebuild what we've got now, and our website and functionality is so extensive that it would undoubtedly cost at least this, if not more, for a professional job. I have read through the thread and looked at some of the drama on X, but still struggling to find out exactly where we are with this situation right now - can anybody provide a TL;DR, or current update on the WP situation?

Hello Administrata I have recently got back into the online world of forums, websites & games. I have recently registered a domain name, Heroel.com, that I had initially planned to use for a text-based browser game I had planned. I have abandoned that project, realising my coding skills are not what they used to be, and rather than have the domain name and hosting go to waste, I'm interested in hiring somebody to create a website on the domain - whether it be a forum, blog, game, or something else, if you have a particular idea - I'm open to suggestions. In return, I'm willing to offer a one-time payment for your time in setting up the website/project (rate to be negotiated), and additionally a profit-sharing model moving forward for your ongoing work in helping to maintain/update the site. I'm open to making a payment via PayPal, or purchasing some credits to send as payment, we can negotiate those terms once we've settled on an idea and agreed a plan to move forward. Requirements: You should be 16+. You should have experience in creating/administrating websites. You should be confident in using FTP or cPanel to setup your website idea. Your idea should be legal and follow UK law, as well as the law in whichever country you reside. If you're interested in this opportunity, please reach out to me via PM. :)

I recently purchased Heroel.com after I had a spurious idea for a text-based browser game. I used to run one many years ago when I was a teenager. I quickly abandoned the idea of continuing to develop it after a single night of coding, after realising that my coding skills are not quite what I thought they were anymore, and it was going to take me an awful long time to set it up. It's a shame aswell, I think I snagged quite a nice domain! :LOL:

Most of the forums I've ran in the past I have been the only admin. I've had moderators on all of my forums, but with the exception of the largest forum I ran for several years, which did have additional admins, I've never found the need for extra administrators. The exception was a forum I run for several years that eventually had thousands of members. We were getting 50-100 new registrations a day, members were upgrading to premium features, and general requests that were coming in were too much for me to handle alone alongside continuing to actively participate in the community, which I felt was just as important. Therefore, I went all-in and recruited three admins - one person I knew IRL who came on board sharing my account. He would deal with everything in terms of email + PM correspondence about site/technical issues, which was a massive assistance. I then hired two admins who were members of the community that had been around since almost the beginning, one took on responsibility for handling moderator activities/actions/appeals, and the other took on the responsibility of assisting members with recovery of accounts with lost passwords and such (for some reason we had an unusually large amount of requests, and we had one particular problem member who would attempt to gain access to others' accounts). That left me with the responsibility of just maintaining the forum technically, working on small additional features, participating in the community and just keeping an overall eye on staff. It was a huge help and a huge weight off my shoulders, because for a short period before I took on the new admins, dealing with everything had become so stressful as a teenager that I was considering just closing the forum for a while to catch up. I'm glad I didn't do that as in hindsight it likely would've been the death of the site there and then as a copycat would've likely quickly emerged, and luckily the forum continued for several years very successfully afterwards. :)