Hi All,

I’m the new owner of SuccessfulForum.com!

Who am I?

My name is James Seligman; I’ve owned and operated several forums dating back almost 7 years. My first forum that I started in 2004 is still up and active today. I hope I can share a little bit of my knowledge to make your forum a successful forum.

What can you except?

You can expect blog post covering a wide range of forum topics, as well as interviews, coding issues, and more.

If there is something you would like me to write about, drop me an email.

Future Plans:

As you can see we have a new theme up and running and will be making more changes in the next couple of days and weeks.

I am rewriting the Successful Forum “How to Monetize Your Forum” eCourse.

More use of Twitter and Facebook

Maybe a contest or two!

Adding a forum directory and an admin discussion forum. (Still debating)

I look forward to hearing you comments and suggestions.

James

I would just like to take this post to talk about a few things which are happening with the blog.

My Absence

As you have probably noticed there is a lack of blog posts for the last month. It was just the summer there and being a student IT can be hard to fit everything into your schedule, even now that I am back at education I am still finding it very difficult.

Also over the last few weeks I have been feeling under the weather therefore have a lack of energy and general de-motivation but things are starting to look more positive.

Successful Forum Hosting

Successful Forum is going under a huge revamp. It got taken down last week and work started to begin on the site. I decided to spice it up with a web 2.0 look it will look great.

At the moment I don’t have an ETA on it, it will definitely be before the end of the year, once I have a better estimation I will put a nice funky countdown script on it.

Toying Of The Idea of a Job Board

I am toying with the idea on whether I should install a job board to the community. Basically, you would list what jobs you require for a fixed price and I would advertise them throughout the Successful Forum community. This would include on the Job board its self and the Successful Forum Newsletter (If you are not a member join now.)

A MyBB Tutorial Video Series

A MyBB tutorial series was began work on late last week and it will be a ten video series on just different things you can do on MyBB. I don’t want to give too much away, be sure to be Subscribed to the SuccessfulForum Youtube Channel to get the latest information.

Posts Will Continue On Monday

I will schedule the first post for September on Monday so stay tuned.

I have been hard at work creating an eCourse for Successful Forum.  It’s now finally here.

How to Monetize Your Forum is an eCourse designed to help you to monetize your forum effectively.  In the eCourse I talk about 5 different methods of monetization and how you can optimize them effectively to gain the most from the method without destroying your community.

To get access to this great eCourse is very easy.  Sign up for the Successful Forum Newsletter and get access to the download link.

The successful forum newsletter is free to join and you will get access to a great variety of information.  Including:

• How to increase traffic to your forum!
• How to generate more activity from your board
• Weekly Blog post updates.
• Great deals and promotions on various products in the forum administration world.
• “How to Monetize Your Forum” Successful Forum eCourse

The best of all, I am giving you all this information for FREE!  Sign up now!

P.s If you are already a subscriber to the Successful Forum newsletter a copy will sent directly to you.

Recently wrote a guest post for one of my favourite forum administration forums, AdminAddict.

In the post I talk about why adding a blog to your forum is a good idea and what benefits it can have for your forum. This ranges from more links in Search Engines index to the boost of activity you receive.

Specifically I cover:

• Why Blogs build creditability
• The benefits you receive from the Search Engines
• The traffic boost your receive
• The activty impact it can have on your forum

I don’t want to give too much away as it don’t want to spoil it or have Google penalize me for duplicate content

I advise you to go and check it out I think you will love it.  A link to Guest Post is here.

Yes you heard right, free forum hosting.  As you know by reading through my blog you have probably seen that I discourage free hosting as it is usually bogus.

I will not change my opinion now, I still agree that you should try to move to your own hosting as soon as possible.

But….

What is Free Forum Hosting Ideal For Then?

Free forum hosting can be ideal for a variety of things.

• If you are just starting your forum and you are finding it hard to pay for hosting then starting a forum in a free host is ideal.  It lets you build up a community while buying you some more time to gather some money so that you can afford real hosting.
• If you play a game online and you are part of a clan/guild/tribe you can create a free forum to talk to your friends and plan a raid for that particular game you play.  It lets you keep everything organised for FREE.
• Do you own an online business and you are not sure on how to set up your own online forum.  Starting a free forum is a great idea to let you get to grips of running a board before installing it own your own business server.
• Just to talk with your friends.  Need a place to talk to your friends, a Free forum is a great place to start.  Why should you have to pay to talk to your friends online?  You don’t any more!
• Practice forum administration.  If you would like some practice before you launch the real thing, it’s good practice to launch a free forum so that you can get to grips with your forum.

Why Should You use Successful Forum Hosting?

Features

Successful Forum Hosting has some great unique features with a variety of different Plug-ins and themes to make your forum unique.

Full list of the features page can be found here.

Top Notch Support

There is a top-notch support forum where you can ask questions, report bugs and give your suggestions for new plug-ins and themes.

Threads are always guaranteed a response from a member of a support team so you will not go unheard.

We even Help You grow up

When the time comes for you to move to your own hosting plan we will gladly help you move. If you follow our “Your Growing Up Package” and sign up for hosting at HostGator we will gladly move your forum for free while throwing in a little discount

What are you waiting for?

So what are you waiting for? Come and try the Successful Forum Hosting today.

I would just like to break the news to everyone.  Remember the hints I was given away on twitter, It’s finally time to tell you.

Successful Forum will finally launch its own free forum hosting service on Sunday/Monday depending on what times zone you are.

Stick around on Sunday/Monday for more information, I do not want to give too much away just now.

Remember come and check back on Sunday/Monday, to get the latest news and sign up for your own FREE FORUM.  This is exciting.

I would just like to break the news to everyone.  Remember the hints I was given away on twitter, It’s finally time to tell you.

Successful Forum will finally launch its own free forum hosting service on Sunday/Monday depending on what times zone you are.

Stick around on Sunday/Monday for more information, I do not want to give too much away just now.

Remember come and check back on Sunday/Monday, to get the latest news and sign up for your own FREE FORUM.  This is exciting.

I have always been a big fan of HostGator and I have listed why in this post.

If you are looking for a place to host your forum then HostGator is the place to be.  They have very, very cheap prices and do you know what?  They are about to get EVEN cheaper.

For the next month SuccessfulForum is offering coupon codes which will you get you $9.94 of your next hosting package.  (Domain names are excluded from the offer.)

Unique Coupon Code:  succesforum

Enter this coupon when you go to purchase your HostGator hosting and you will get your $9.94 discount.

Enjoy your HostGator hosting today!

Mybb Group is currently in peruse of the domain name mybb.com and needs your help.

Mybb.com is owned by another party who do not use this domain name. MyBB group have made numerous attempts to buying the domain but have always been out of reach.

Myself, I have been a MyBB user for years and love their forum software. It’s most suited for the people who like the vBulletin features but don’t like the PhPBB3 design.

So why am I writing this blog post? I am encouraging all MyBB users who read successfulforum.com to participate and help raise money for the cause. MyBB is constantly developing their software so that it stays ahead of other forum software companies and most importantly they do this free of charge. In my opinion it’s the least we can do to help the MyBB community grow larger and pay back the MyBB team for their hard work and dedication to the project.

Thanks for reading!

For more information click here

Big changes are happening at successfulforum.com and I am very proud to announce the new addition of a forum directory to the site.

What Is A Forum Directory?

A forum directory is basically a listing of different forums.  When your forum is added it is  placed in a category this makes the full directory easier viewing for everyone.

Why A Forum Directory?

I created this forum directory to try to group all of the forums in one single place to make it easier for other forum admins to get a list of forums.  This will let other forum admins see how other boards are run and may be they can learn from their mistakes which is one of the main parts of running a successful forum. Knowing what you have done wrong and how you can improve it.

How Does This Benefit You!

You can see an increase in traffic.  I expect the directory to be read by everyone not just forum admins therefore anyone looking for a forum to post in will be able to find you.

You will be able to learn from other forums. Therefore give you ideas to adapt and improve your own forum.

Without Further Ado

I present to you http://successfulforum.com/directory/ a new forum directory on the web.