Just found this site - very nice. Hopefully some of you guys n girls will be able to offer some userful advice (especially if you've built your own community site already).

Some of my work collegues and myself (we work in a small IT departmen) found ourselves becoming disallusioned with our relationship with business users, so created a website to let off steam. Originally it was just for us, but we've realised that there are other IT staff out there who feel the same, and go through the same stuff. So...

I installed and configured a CMS system (php fusion) on my PHP and Mysql hosting, and started adding articles and news, custom content, and a lot of silly stuff :lol:

I've done the usual submissions to search engines, but what we probably need to do is find suitable places to swap links with, directories, any anything anyone can think of?

Anyone found writing to magazines or online mags a way to get noticed?

Please take a look at our site; << url snipped >> see what we've got, how we're trying to grow it (35 members now, 2/3rds from outside our company).

Any advice appreciated - sign up if you like the tone (very surreal / angry / silly / fun).

Cheers, Krispy

Hi! Welcome to DaniWeb. Sorry I had to snip your URL. We have a strict no link policy in these forums to weed out spam. It also prevents every thread from turning into a site review instead of a discussion that can benefit everyone. You can post a site review in our Website Reviews forum: http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/forum55.html

That aside ... it seems like you have yourself a nice niche that is attracting a good community. Kudos! One of the major things you can do now is, like you said, do some advertising swaps with other sites that offer a complementary product or service ... sites that target your audience but don't compete with you. Word of mouth and return visitors are going to be the #1 way people will get to your site.

Something else to do is find another forum which complements yours and post, post, post in it! Use a link to your forum in your signature. It will help distinguish you as an authority in the field as well as drive targeted traffic from forum-goers.

Thanks for the comments - and I realised I shouldn't have posted the url when i scrolled down your forums and spotted the better place. sorry about that.

I'll continue to try and find complimentary sites as you say - better to share links with sites that share a theme or ideal I guess. :cheesy:

you can just do what i do--have my url at my signature and then when posting something like your topic i say -how does this blah blah blah on my forum (link at signature)

enjoy the forumz!