Running a forum questions

massahwahl

massahwahl

VIP Member
I am in charge of a website for a local music store and yesterday I installed PHPbb on the server and setup a forum where local musicians and bands can look for new members, post ads for shows, talk instruments and music, etc...

My question is being that it is a brand new forum, what are some ways to get people to go to it and contribute? Its obvious that without a strong community the whole thing falls apart some Im wondering who all has experience or advice with this sort of thing (Ian I would love your input!) Were going to be doing the basic grassroots method of just telling customers to go to it and trying to get people from the facebook page to check it out and get their bands on it, but are there any sites that help you get the word out or anything? Again whatever help I can get or just basic forum tips I would appreciate it!
 
ukulele_ninja said:
I am in charge of a website for a local music store and yesterday I installed PHPbb on the server and setup a forum where local musicians and bands can look for new members, post ads for shows, talk instruments and music, etc...

My question is being that it is a brand new forum, what are some ways to get people to go to it and contribute? Its obvious that without a strong community the whole thing falls apart some Im wondering who all has experience or advice with this sort of thing (Ian I would love your input!) Were going to be doing the basic grassroots method of just telling customers to go to it and trying to get people from the facebook page to check it out and get their bands on it, but are there any sites that help you get the word out or anything? Again whatever help I can get or just basic forum tips I would appreciate it!
Click to expand...

There are a few tutorials on google on how to bring up your site on google searches.Search optimization.
More number of linkbacks to you forum will increase the traffic and the google search ranking.
You can put the links on blogs.
You can use all the social networking sites with a community page and a group and a fan page and also as a user.
Put on youtube videos about the forum.
You can also start a chain mail with some musician performance video.And spam the mailing list.

Hope the above helps.
 
If it is a music store, I would probably not have a forum on the actual site. Reason being, if the forum is inactive, it will make the music store itself look like a flop and could deter customers.
Furthermore, people are less likely to join a forum attached to a store, yes I know there are examples out there to disprove that statement, but probably better to have the forum on a different domain and not related to the store. It could link back to the store, instead of where you would see normal ads, you could place ads back to the music store.
And I guess, a descriptive domain which contains terms that people are searching for, can help with search engine rankings, though I hear google might be tweaking their algo so that it does not play as much importance as it currently does.
a dmoz.org directory listing can help, but that can take years to get into, if at all.
 
I see where your going with that Ian. Right now its going to be a pretty straightforward place for bands to place ads about upcoming shows and for people to place 'help wanted' ads for bands, studio recording, etc. We are doing lessons and such on their as well but were staying small for the time being. We do have a lot of community support since the store is entering into its 80th anniversary. I will talk to them about moving it to a seperate domain though because that is a really good idea.
 
Its also a good idea if they are doing any sort of ecommerce transactions through their main business site, to keep them seperate. If the phpbb.com forum software is not regularly updated or gets hacked, it could put other information at risk and not look good for the main business site.
 
THAT is very good to know. We are using prestashop on the same server but currently it is used only to display inventory, no selling as of right now, but they do plan to move to online selling within the next year. Do you recommend having separate servers altogether or are separate SQL databases sufficient? Right now they are both sharing an SQL database. I asked the hosting company if there were any concerns having them both share the same database and they flat out said no, adding one more reason that I dislike them.
 
Same server is fine. Are you sure they share the same mysql database? Does prestashop integrate with phpbb?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top