Depends on your niche and topic really, there are certain topics which warrant subdvision into specialist areas where as others require you to have everything in one place. Usually IT/Computer...

Since our community is a sports community we do use it to keep track of upcomming fixtures and events in the sport, apart from that its just the same old birthdays.

Well we had email activation turned off went on well for quite a while then started getting spammers so turned it on, was ok for a couple of months then more spammers started joining so eventually we...

Thing is you wouldnt even need 90 percent of the modifications you have to install in phpbb because vBulletin is feature rich, besides installing new modifications in vB 3.5.x is a piece of cake as...

Dani you already know my outtake on this subject I am all for allowing links as long as they are not spam links the forum is for dicussion and wether dicussion is site specefic, general or general...

Never been a big fan of pay for posts idea. IMO its not healthy for over all growth of the forum/community.

Get friends to join up to help you kick start with posting and activity. Apart from that concentrate on adding new content, optimizing your site for search engines. Here are a few ideas to get a few...

Well there are countless services like this one out there, every other webmaster forum which is dedicated its focus on community management has such a programme.

Images at the top are changed by editing the overall_header.tpl where as the background and other colours are changed by changing the CSS files, you will find both the files in the templates...

Well phpbb is basic and is well suited for beginners if you are serious about your community and wish to keep it for long run then go with VB or IPB whichever suites your needs.

Thanks for the replies. Dani you hit the mark, the problem is that new members feel alienated and dont think they can fit into the community, because as I said we have some members who live and...

March was an incredible month for us, we have 44,000 posts in the month of March which is great. Anyways around 1542 new topics were created but the problem is 90 percent of the new topics created...

Vbulletin is a forum software, you buy it, download it and then install it on your webhost. It comes with a manual so that should not be a problem. Secondly does your mom need a forum to discuss the...

Add content, fresh new content as much as you can and as regularly as you can, give people some exclusive content to talk about, make your forum different from other linux forums out there, give...

Don't you have ftp access? if yes log into it and access the directory I mentioned should be easy enough from there.

Just upload them in /images/smiles/ directory.

First download them and upload them in the appropriate directory of your forum software, I am not sure which forum software you are using here otherwise I would have been more specefic in my...

I thought about converting to VB but as I said I know IPB inside out and Steven proved my point, once you start working on IPB and get to know it its a very powerfull piece of software and can be...

Thats exactly my point why should one wait for others to provide content, its your site so you should be giving your hundred percent to it. This is where Daniweb is different, dani does not wait for...

The reason to start a forum is because you hope that members will provide all of the content - i.e. less work for you. The problem is that without content you have no members, and without members you...

It really surprises me these days that there are number of websites there are popping up that are just forums with 0% actual content contributed by the webmaster. Setting up a forum is easy, even a...

Take the above precautions but keep in mind 90 percent of times these threats are just threats, people use a couple of technical words and make you belive that they know how to hack. Follow...

If you let people criticise too much then they will get out of hand and a time will come when there will be abusive language used against the musician very openly. If I was the musician or his agent...

I started using IPB when it was free and have continued to use it, bought a license for it when it went paid and havent looked back. I also use VB on another forum. I rate VB higher but will continue...

I also started with forum index as my main page but growth became stagnant after a while and I figured a forum is only as successfull as the content you provide. There are exceptions though where...

Travis I dont know about VB but IPB has two very good mods sdk and ssi which lets you project/fetch different parts of your forum like stats, latest posts, most read posts etc onto any html or for...

I had a couple of avatar sets uploaded which members used in the begening but they eventually got bored with them and now majority of them use their own custom avatars, which is ok with me as long as...

Well my own forum which I personally own is small, 600 odd members so its running quite comfortably on a shared server, the bigger one which I mentioned in the other thread (I dont own so I dont pay,...

Me is a mod too :p
I do know floris from TAZ :)

My site has around 400,000 posts and 1620+ members the database is 60mb with gzip (without it is 220mb using invision power board), that is just the size of the forum database, the CMS is around 50...

I use IPB and they have a pretty decent announcement feature but personally I dont like it, I usually prefer mass pming members if I want them to know something because usually only 20 percent of...

I am not sure, with gmail, hotmail and yahoo providing large amount of disc space the temptation to go for a bigger mailbox with another domain name has gone down. People usually prefer gmail,...

I am no expert in setting up home servers to setup a site on that, for a starting forum people usually prefer that you buy a simple average hosting package from a reputed hosting firm, which should...

Well it depends, your hosting cost will be standard no matter which board software you choose, you can minimise your bulletin board software cost so much so that you dont even have to pay a dime for...

When I first made a forum back in 2001 for the first time I had absolutely no knowledge of forum softwares I had some vague knowledge of ftp and thats all. The thing is when you start working on your...

Only thing I can remember about google getting into photos was picasa which I think is a sofware for desktop to organize photos. www.picasa.com

No. of posts is the last thing I look for when I appoint a new moderator. Usually I look for the respect commanded by the moderator, knowledge in the field and most importantly maturety level, how...

Well to me the secret is to provide on the dot help and good discussions and most importantly provide as much exclusive content as you can. Exclusive content is the major key it solved the major...

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/forum51.html
Submit your site for reviews.

csgal the thing is you had an established dedicated member base before you ventured into exapanding. Thus SEO...

Well Ill ask the question which alot of people do, what makes your site different, Ask yourself why would anyone join your site rather than say gamespot or any of the otehr big guns out there. You...