March 2010

Forum Moderators – Are They Worth It?

by James on March 15, 2010

In a recent interview with Lisa Irby she highlighted very clearly how important forum moderators are for your forum. Forum moderators is self-explanatory. They help moderate your forum by deleting unwanted posts and giving infractions to users so that they stay in line within the forum rules.

When Your Forum Is Too Large

The best time to hire a forum moderator is when you feel that you can no longer control your forum by your own. There is no exact formula to find out when the time is right to hire a moderator, you just have to feel it own your own. A good rule of thumb to go by is can I read all the posts in my forum in a day? If no then it’s time to hire a moderator.

Moderators Keep The Forum User Friendly

Moderators will keep your forum user friendly. Their job is to specifically read through threads and delete the posts that they think that other users may find offensive or that break the forum rules. Having a user friendly forum shows professionalism and makes your forum look clean which in turn will promote activity.

Hiring That Moderator

As Lisa Stated in the interview one of the mistakes she made as a forum administrator was that she hired a moderator that she never really knew. This is a common mistake you see in many forums and sometimes can have disastrous consequences. As Lisa said before you hire get to know their posting habits. That includes going through recent posts, checking their behavior and looking through previous infractions/bans.  You don’t generally want to hire a person who has a ban history but people do mature on the forums and change their posting habits.

Get to know the person your want to hire. Make sure they have the correct personality to moderate. You want to hire someone that has a helpful personality as they will be willing to commit to the community and give something back.

Last but not least have global moderators. Global moderators have the privileges to moderate anywhere on the forum not just a specific forum. Global moderators are there to solve disputes between moderators and members as well as filling in for any absent moderators whether they be sick or just on holiday.

Wrapping It Up

Moderators are a great pair of extra hands to help keep your board look professional and clean. These people should be chosen with care as you give them access to delete threads and posts but the right person will do the world of good.

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Forum Software Review – PHPBB3

by James on March 8, 2010

PhPBB is a free open source forum package.  PhPbb3 is regarded as the most used free forum software solution in the world as it grows more and more every day.  Today, in this blog post I am going to review the software and tell you what I think about it.

Installation Score: 10/10

I installed PHPbb3 very easily.  If you have fantastico installed on your server you can have your hob forum set up in 20 seconds.  All I had to enter was an admin username and password, the directory I would wish the software to be installed on and a description and forum name.  It was very easy and simple.  If you don’t have fantastico installed it is a little bit trickier to set up.  You have to go more in depth.

User Friendliness Score: 8/10

Phpbb3 out of the box seems very user friendly.  The log-in, register and FAQ links are straight in front of you when you first appear on the site.  There is no need to search all over the screen.  Once logged in the user control panel, it seems very easy to use.  Everything seems to be laid out nicely which makes everything easier to find.  The only faults I found with the user friendliness are that the admin panel log-in link is at the very bottom of the page, which is nowhere near the user cp and moderation cp link where I think it should be.  Also you have to resize your own image for it to be uploaded in to your avatar which is a slight inconvenience.

How Intimidating is the Admin Panel Score: 6/10

At first glance the forum software looks very neat and tidy.  Everything is organised under headings and sub headings.  Could be intimidating for new administrators but it looks very juicy for current administrators.

How Efficient is Moderation Score: 3/10

The moderation seemed very confusing.  Nothing compared to MyBB or VBulletin.  I found it very hard to infract/warn for particular posts.  I could only imagine what this would do to a new forum administrator who has never used PHPbb3 before.

Layout Score: 7/10

The layout is very bland, something you would expect with the default software.  It is defiantly better than other forum software layouts though.  You can great some great themes where you can spice up your forum.

Customer Support Score: 7/10

Customer support seems very good with PHPbb3.  There is a very active support forum where you can get help on modification and styles.  They also have an irc channel and a knowledge base to solve common problems.

Overall Overall Score: 7/10

PhPbb3 is a great piece of forum software.  It has excelled in many aspects of the forum world and it’s very easy to understand why it’s regarded as the most popular free forum software in the world.

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Do You Congest Your Forum With Plug-Ins?

March 5, 2010

Another new blog post today and it’s a discussion post. Everyday new plug-ins are created and released to the public. From contact forms to ad managers you have a plug-in for everything. But when is enough enough? When do we stop adding more plug-ins to our site? Today in this blog post I am going [...]

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5 Activity Tips For Your Forum

March 1, 2010

Activity is the key aspect that attracts new members. If a visitor comes along and sees that last post was dated two weeks ago then the chances of the visitor joining your forum are zero to none. In this blog post I am going to share with you five tips to increase the activity on [...]

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