How can my XenForo website beat the vBulletin competition

[Dragapult]

How can my XenForo website beat the vBulletin competition

How can it not?

Content is king. If the vB board has more interesting content than an empty XenForo board, which one do you think new people are likely to join? Most people don't care at all what software a board is running. Most people probably couldn't even tell you the difference between them.

 

[Decent60]

Get an active staff that is just ans enthusiastic as you are, sign up to feeds that are reliable, up-to-date and paste the information on your site (be sure to quote your source(s), you don't want a plagiarism rep now), keep your content relevant and remove the clutter. Word of mouth also helps, especially if you belong to other gaming sites and they allow small advertisements in your signatures
Using a style that compliments about what you are talking about is also key, but don't make it too flashy or too bland.
Like Quillz stated, most people really won't be able to tell much difference between the two software without actually being a full-time member and you've already attracted the full-time members. Software is important, but it's second to content and design.
Advertisements can be utilized but if you have too many on your site, you can drive members away. If you do have them on there, keep them in a centralized location. Personally, I hate advertisements and I utilize my adblocker to the max. It's really not that I hate advertisements, but how the webmaster places them. I went to a very good tech site, but there were ads laying in the middle of the main content of the posting. You really had a hard time telling which paragraph went to which ending sentence. My site has 3 advertisements that disappear upon members logging in. I wont make as much money that way, but it keeps me and my members happy.

 

[Dragapult]

And perhaps to prove my point, one of the biggest boards around is Gaia Online, which uses a heavily modified phpBB 2. I guarantee you 99.9% of that user base wouldn't even know what phpBB is.

Hell, there are some gigantic ProBoards that I visit from time to time. A completely free, remotely hosted solution. These boards are popular because of content. The users don't care one bit that the community isn't being powered by XenForo.

 

[Business Coach]

YES contests are always a great idea

you will never avoid spam, you can only discourage and clean it.

 

[Floris]

Content is king. If the vB board has more interesting content than an empty XenForo board, which one do you think new people are likely to join? Most people don't care at all what software a board is running. Most people probably couldn't even tell you the difference between them.

Of course you are very right not disputing that. It's what I tell people all the time.

Put that same content inside a xenforo shell though ..

 

[iTuN3r]

Of course you are very right not disputing that. It's what I tell people all the time.

Put that same content inside a xenforo shell though ..

Instea of putting same content which is already at competators site why not come up with something better ....Most of times people will get bored with same contents everywhere & they are always looking for fresh and new ideas i am sure people can come up with better and new contents for their community .

 

[Floris]

I didn't say that. I said the same content, assuming the user would compare his Own content

 

[Dragapult]

Of course you are very right not disputing that. It's what I tell people all the time.

Put that same content inside a xenforo shell though ..

Again, I really don't think it would make a big difference. If there were two boards with identical content, I think the typical user would register with the one that came up first on Google. They wouldn't care about the board software, most people don't.

 

[Carlos]

I have just learned how much traffic you can get with 50 dollars. Let me explain, I ran an Ad for MVC3Forum yesterday morning all the way to this morning, 12:00am sharp. And thus far, I have gained 107 fans for the facebook page of MVC3forum - AND these are the stats that the facebook has garnered:



I will leave that there for a day or two for anyone that wants to see it, after that, I will delete it from the site. The site has seen its busiest day ever on launch day (feb 15). Not only did I accomplish a feat, I also brought more return visitors today. It does not matter what part of the day I see the site - it keeps getting at least 5 to 8 visitors online.

I can't imagine how much traffic I would be able to attract with a call of duty ad. I simply can't, but I would imagine that NGP would get the same traffic numbers as I, and if you spend some money, I guarantee you will have more traffic.