First forum - still experimenting. Any advice would be great!

[palmer]

Hello everyone,

I just set up a new forum for the Irish community in Australia. In the first week got over a hundred members so its going quite well. The forum itself is still quite basic, I want to ad some advertising space but am still unsure what is the best add on to use. I have had an existing blog with wordpress for the past few months, which is going quite well.

In terms of my forums I basically used my existing Facebook audience to create each sub forum etc. I don't want to have to many at the start as I am afraid some will be empty.

I appreciate any feedback suggestions you guys might have! I am sure you have been using xenforo a lot longer than me. Site is Irish Around Oz

 

[tajhay]

I want to ad some advertising space but am still unsure what is the best add on to use.

Dont use an addon, instead update the ad_ templates yourself.

Some other advice:
- Get yourself a style of audentio, arty etc. It can look _so_ much better than it does now!
- perhaps get a portal (xenporta/simple portal etc) or even featured threads to highlight upcoming events or decent news worth highlighting.
- personally i would recommend getting ads on there after you have built up a decent community, and members are posting freely. Noticed that despite your recent membership numbers, most members arent posting at all. encourage that first...get a community feel going and then worry about ads. Better to not scare then straight away
- good luck

 

[palmer]

Dont use an addon, instead update the ad_ templates yourself.

Some other advice:
- Get yourself a style of audentio, arty etc. It can look _so_ much better than it does now!
- perhaps get a portal (xenporta/simple portal etc) or even featured threads to highlight upcoming events or decent news worth highlighting.
- personally i would recommend getting ads on there after you have built up a decent community, and members are posting freely. Noticed that despite your recent membership numbers, most members arent posting at all. encourage that first...get a community feel going and then worry about ads. Better to not scare then straight away
- good luck

Yes good point! Any advice on how to get them posting? I still have quite a lot to learn. I was just thinking about placing maybe just one ad block but might hold off until the community grows.

I had a quick question how many moderators should one have? One for each section or the more the better? Thanks!

 

[tajhay]

Yes good point! Any advice on how to get them posting? I still have quite a lot to learn. I was just thinking about placing maybe just one ad block but might hold off until the community grows.

I had a quick question how many moderators should one have? One for each section or the more the better? Thanks!

Well you have a decent following on facebook and see that you are advertising it quite heavily on your facebook page hence the high signup in recent days. Have a 'introduce yourself' section perhaps? include a chatroom(taigachat), just need to improve the social interaction part so that more and more people come to your site. Theres also quite a few irish settlement areas around all over australia...maybe even have a business directory for them etc.

not really a fan that your moderator is a migration specialist and tells people to contact his office for advice etc...doesnt seem like impartial advice. you need to get more people on board...even contact irish clubs etc.

right now you dont need a large moderation group or else it will look mod heavy...you just need helpers create new discussion topics and interact more with the users. Best to keep your site impartial...else if one migration centre is hawking the visitors to their site it looks like a big ad for that site.

 

[palmer]

Well you have a decent following on facebook and see that you are advertising it quite heavily on your facebook page hence the high signup in recent days. Have a 'introduce yourself' section perhaps? include a chatroom(taigachat), just need to improve the social interaction part so that more and more people come to your site. Theres also quite a few irish settlement areas around all over australia...maybe even have a business directory for them etc.

not really a fan that your moderator is a migration specialist and tells people to contact his office for advice etc...doesnt seem like impartial advice. you need to get more people on board...even contact irish clubs etc.

right now you dont need a large moderation group or else it will look mod heavy...you just need helpers create new discussion topics and interact more with the users. Best to keep your site impartial...else if one migration centre is hawking the visitors to their site it looks like a big ad for that site.

Good advice, Yes I kind invited the migration specialist, mainly to ensure that some answers were correctly answered. I am sure the community will grow over time, just a matter of building it up, contacting people as you suggested. Great advice thanks again

 

[Bryan Gilchrist]

Looks nice, but I'd definitely go with a different theme.

 

[SelfSufficientMe]

Nice start mate - got to start somewhere...

Pretty big Irish community in Oz good luck!

Noticed your bottom banner ad isn't responsive but I guess you're working on it atm.

 

[palmer]

Nice start mate - got to start somewhere...

Pretty big Irish community in Oz good luck!

Noticed your bottom banner ad isn't responsive but I guess you're working on it atm.

Cheers yes there sure is a massive community here

I was unsure about the responsive ads, does that basically mean if someone is on a mobile device Google ads change size? Cheers

 

[SelfSufficientMe]

Cheers yes there sure is a massive community here

I was unsure about the responsive ads, does that basically mean if someone is on a mobile device Google ads change size? Cheers

Yes, that's correct. Brogan has written an excellent tutorial about responsive ads (featured) in the resources section.
Also, adsense does have a beta responsive ad you can try (when you create an ad in adsense look for the responsive one about half way down) I use it on my forum and have no issues but it on my blog it does tend to mess with my page widths. But give it a go it can't hurt to try it.

 

[palmer]

Yes, that's correct. Brogan has written an excellent tutorial about responsive ads (featured) in the resources section.
Also, adsense does have a beta responsive ad you can try (when you create an ad in adsense look for the responsive one about half way down) I use it on my forum and have no issues but it on my blog it does tend to mess with my page widths. But give it a go it can't hurt to try it.

Yea saw it! Very useful, I went with what you recommended great idea! Didn't even see that option on my adsense account Works fine on my forum haven't tried it in Wordpress. Is you blog wordpress as well? Cheers

 

[SelfSufficientMe]

That's great, I'm glad the responsive ad is working for you. No, I don't have a Wordpress based blog but I've set them up for other people in the past - it's a good platform (not that I'm any expert). My blog is just an independent setup through an Aussie reseller - it's a bit "clunky" but they're improving their system all the time.

 

[palmer]

That's great, I'm glad the responsive ad is working for you. No, I don't have a Wordpress based blog but I've set them up for other people in the past - it's a good platform (not that I'm any expert). My blog is just an independent setup through an Aussie reseller - it's a bit "clunky" but they're improving their system all the time.

Yea only reason I say it is I have big 336x280 ad block in the majority of the blog posts and tends to take up a bit to much space on mobile devices. Must give the responsive ads a go on my blog.