I guess it depends on how you define truly. If you mean, the owner/admin dies, and yet somehow 3 years later the forum is still humming along, then, yeah, no forum is that self-sustaining.
...

It wouldn't be spam if you could partner with a site that is already established in your market. I've done that with email newsletters -- I find a site for writers, find out how much it costs to...

You want people to give you advice on spamming?

-Tony

Not only that, it promotes quality discussion, because the people participating don't want to drive away members. Suddenly, the top posters start to view your site the way you view it. They want to...

I'm about to implement this on one of my forums. I'm looking at Google's terms and I cannot find anything that would prohibit this. Can you explain how it violates the TOS? I don't want to get in...

SMF (Simple Machines Forum) is another free one.

My thinking is like this:

If you're poor, or if you are a free software zealot (I am -- I want the ability to freely modify & use without...

I just sent out my second newsletter, over the weekend. Poor response. :( My first newsletter went out on a Sunday and got a great response, but maybe that was just the newness of it.

I'll...

Wow, if you're actually going to do it, let me give you some tips.

First, you can blow your whole budget in an hour, if you pick keywords that are too broad. If that happens, it's not a total...

Really? That's primarily what I like it for. It's perfect for the obscure old threads that I'll never remember to check, unless there is a reminder.

But I do have a strategy for managing the big...

Yes, I love that too. In fact, I wrote the mod for phpBB that switches the default to "enabled." However, oddly, it's about the least-downloaded mod I've got. I think forum admins might not...

DanceInstructor, dojo, Dustin, thank you all for the input. I eventually slogged through it. I ended up banning SIX people, including the moderator, no chance (or desire) of making it up with her...

Well, if the ideas mentioned won't work, that may just be a difference in size -- your almost 70K membership causes issues that those of us with 5K memberships don't experience. That's OK. But...

By the way, your idea about polls does work. I'm sure you've seen Slashdot's poll on the right side of their site. Every week (or two), they have a new poll. All they have to do is set it up, and...

I did a contest that required examining every response, but it didn't take much time on my part at all. Here's what I did: I wanted a new logo, and I offered $250 to the winner. Each entry needed...

Here's what I'm working toward for email. I'm creating a short email (just a few paragraphs) that contains links to the best topics, and mentions a couple of the newest site features. I'll send it...

I was always impressed by welcome PMs. However, I have to admit that it never made me post more. It just gave me a warm fuzzy feeling.

One of the best ways (I think) to get rid of 1-post wonders...

I did that, and regretted it. I'd much rather use a paid service, even considering how weak their services are.

The people I did post exchanges with posted terribly. One guy just copied posts...

I have a plea for advice from admins of large, successful forums. I'm in a bind. I run a few forums, and finally created a successful one. But last week, one of the moderators posted some material...

Huh? You can do a 50 cent Adwords campaign, if you want. Google will let you spend however much or little you wish.

-Tony

You can't even afford $10 for Google Adwords? Without some kind of boost at the beginning, you're going to grow VERY slowly.

I guess if I had absolutely zero dollars, my best way to promote would...

On December 19th I purchased 100 posts from both Forum Elves & Forum Launch. Days went by with no further activity. Finally, on December 31st, I saw a batch of registrations and lots of posting from...

You know, contests really worked for me. I should have mentioned that in the other topic you have on traffic-building.

Anyway, I did a bounty -- $1 per magazine entered into my database. I ended...

Yeah, I agree with Dani. On my site, I run a query on the database every month or two, to get a list of all the members who have not even activated their accounts. I send them a reminder email with...

Well, I just posted a checklist of things to do to spark up a forum (in another thread), so I won't rehash all that here. However, I will suggest two things.

First, it may be possible that you're...

Well, yeah. You're not doing any of the things you're supposed to do to make a forum successful. Here, I'll give you a checklist:


You need a signature. You've mentioned your forums without...

That would be an interesting rebuttal to my point, if I had been talking about unmodified phpBB. The entire point of my post was that the Gaia modifications are available, so it is possible for...

Technically, you get a product that has source code, and you can view it. However, it does not fall into the category of "open source" because you really don't have much freedom with it -- it has a...

I know I'm responding to an old post, but since the thread as a whole is still getting replies, it seems fine to mention this.

Although Gaia Online has indeed modified the heck out of phpBB, they...

I agree that vB has better goodies at the admin (control panel) level. I don't agree that phpBB is less secure. I know that may sound shocking, what with all the phpBB patches. But my experience...

Yikes, broad, I don't know if I would be posting more links after the admins removed the previous ones. But maybe they've given up on this thread. It's just begging for people to brag about (and...

To answer the original question, yes, I would pay to advertise my Web sites. I currently do Google Adwords with a $10/day cap, and pay a max of 20¢ per click. I don't typically hit the $10 limit. ...

Hmm. I know of three phpBB mods that will turn your forum into a blog-like thing. There is phpbb_fetch_all, phpBB Blog, and another one you can find in the phpBB mod support forums. I don't...