What types of community building activities are out there to strengthen an online community ... contests, live chat, get togethers, etc?

A lot of communities are trying to start live chats. It brings more intrest to it. But there are also things like News articles and RSS feeds that they don't just have to go around searching for.

Everybody likes to find a place where everything is right there. They don't have to go to 20 different sites to find what they are looking for.

Yay for me! My site has everything you mentioned. Anything else?

Hmm.. How about an Information Station Page where Certain members can submit articles that they have written. Kind of like a journalist effect. But On different areas of everything. From computers to current events.

Blogs?

Sort of, But not in a personal affect. A public blog but, only a certain group of members that want to partake in writing articles can post in it.

Take for instance. I have a ton of articles, reports, and essays that I have written for school and other numerous things. About firewalls, Computer Hardware & Software, Viruses, Tropical Storms, Natural disasters, Military events, Political events.

See A wide mass of Information. Over a Variety of things.
If you have some other members that would like to write articles on different things going on in the computer world we could have an entire page for them.
We would be the DaniWeb Journalists.

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Just think of it. Google's and MSN's Headlines

"DaniWeb: The New Inside News and Information Source for Technology."

"DaniWeb: Surpasses eWEEK, PC MAG, and PC Security online News Sources."

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Hehe ... that's what blogs are, well, kinda. A significant number of blogs are not personal.

Well are there any other Ideas that are going to be posted. There is a reason Dani started this thread people. She wants your input too. Not just mine.

Hey cscgal... I would like your opinion on bringing up my site . Please tell me if you could reply to my post ... Plz...

I think the best way to bring up an online community like forums is to have good amount of varied content put up there and if you want people to read your stuff they must be discussed at other places ...like a review on your own site somewhere or even better start groups related to discussions in your site's latest discussions and let people know about it by making the groups information rich .
People tend to search for terms such as " current events " more than often . If u see google groups come in google search also . So its a risk worth taking .....
What do u say ...any other ideas ???