Update: ugh, there are no phpbb to bbpress converters. So I will be sticking with phpBB for now although I am currently looking for a new wordpress theme that will serve  as my permanant theme

I have grown wiser in the blogging ways since starting this so be on the lookout for better posts.

In the meantime check out my BookWorms United blog.

People don’t seem to be getting it, they either can’t read or are hoping I will just approve it without checking it out. The most annoying sites so far are the classifieds websites.

Once again I will say “The directory is for forums only!“.

There are improvements to the existing features as well as many new ones. Some of these features include
* Inline spam management & prevention
* Thread tagging
* Search cloud / tag cloud
* Thread prefixes
* Reciprocal friendships between users
* Public visitor messaging on profile pages with ‘conversation’ feature
* User picture galleries with user comment facility
* User-created social groups with invite only and moderated membership options
* Extended member profile pages
* Customizable member profile pages with admin-controlled styling abilities
* Inline editing of custom user profile fields
* Lightbox viewer for attached images
* Viewable and comparable history maintained for post edits
* Extended re-authentication for inline moderation actions
* Notices system for navigation bar
* Multiple human-verification systems including reCAPTCHA, image verification and Q/A
* User change history
* Social bookmarking integration

It requires PHP 4.3.3 or over as well as Mysql 4.0.16

First off, I have bumped up my posting schedule to once a week

This week I will be talking about adding a forum to popular CMS, Joomla.

Do you have a website that is powered by Joomla and want to integrate a forum into it? There are many ways that you can do that, with either a bridge, a module or a component. The most obvious one would be the Fireboard or Joomlaboard. There are also integration modules for SMF, and phpBB

They range from being fairly east to being complete headscratchers. If you read the instructions that come with the download step by step then you shouldn’t have a problem. You can find these “hacks” at http://extensions.joomla.org, joomlahacks.com and by doing a simple Google search for “Joomlaboard” or “integrate forums with joomla”

The fireboard can be a bit buggy and personally I don’t like it. I personally wouldn’t want to have my forum connected with Joomla because if I were to miss something up then the whole site would go down and I would probably have to rebuild either the forum or the website.

Regular links are free, and the reciprocal link is entirely optional! So that would mean a free backlink! Of course, the directory is no-follow free so it will help boost your search engine ranking. Of course, it would be nice to have some links back to here, hint hint.

I am currently compiling a list of free and paid directories and am collecting alexa and google PR for them so check back in two weeks

Paid forum softwares are good too. They are more likely to have more features, and are highly customizable. The top two paid forum softwares that I would recommend are vBulletin and IPB. Many professional websites use vBulletin, and there are currently no free hosting for this software. IPB (Invision Power Board), is also a well known paid forum software which unlike vBulletin, is offered for free by many free forum hosting websites.

All things considered, it comes down to the forum owners choice. My recommendation would be to go with either SMF or phpBB. Although, it does take a bit more work to customize and maintain, it won’t drain your finances and you would have some extra money in your budget.

1. The first and most important thing to do when promoting a forum is to know who your target audience is

2. Another very important technique would be Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I will be talking about this in a later post but I will touch lightly on it right now. If you optimize your forum with the proper keywords and description then it could rank well in search engines.

3. Submit your forum to various directories and search engines, this should bring in members who most likely enjoy your forums topic.

4. Place the Url of your forum into your signature at other forums.

5. Join post exchange sites such as forumgrowers.com. I will post a full list on a later date.

6. Off-line advertising, if you have enough money to run an ad in the local newspaper or if you have time to print up flyer, do it!

7. Social bookmarking: great for blogs and great for forums as well! If there are posts on your forum that you think would pull people in then use digg, stumbleupon and any other social bookmarking sites you may use.

8. Online advertising, if you know Google Adwords, it could be very helpful. But you don’t have to, more and more people are turning to alternatives such as Project Wonderful. With PW, you get to choose which sites to show your ad on. You can also sell advertising using Project Wonderful.

9. Leave comments on blogs, with your forums url on the Url section that most blogs have.

10. Never send out an email to people you don’t know asking them to join your forum. That will just turn them off and give your forum a bad name.

I figured people wouldn’t want to go to the forums if the blog is rarely updated so I have decided to make at least one post a week. Let me know in a comment which articles you would like to see. I plan to write about marketing and promoting your forum and other related articles

That is all I have time for right now, but things have come up in my personal life in a way that I will now be able to promote and focus on this blog with a lot of my time.

My question to you all is, do you think that blogs make great forum promotion tool? If you have a domain and are running your forum on the main page, do you have a blog included?

Most forum owners never even think about blogs, but they can be useful. Many people enjoy reading other peoples blogs, and who knows? Your blog could hold all the important information such as articles that would normally make a very long forum post. Since your into growing your forum, and not a blog, you could just update it only once a week, unlike that way most people update 3 times a week.

Well I must be going, see you all next week!