Creating General Chat/Promotion category

[whiteRabbit]

I am in the middle of creating a community forum.  While I work on a couple of suggestions made such as

1. Create News and Accouchements category
1.1. Post news and accouchements pretty frequently
2. Create Suggestions and Feedback category
2.1. Ask people to post messages in Suggestions and Feedback category,

I am considering another thing to get visitors to post messages.  I am considering to create General Chat/Promotion category for site owners/maintainers (of related sites) to post a promotion type message.  Is this a good idea?  Has anyone tried something like this?

[CoastPC]

I am considering to create General Chat/Promotion category for site owners/maintainers (of related sites) to post a promotion type message.  Is this a good idea?

Its sure a way to get people to the Forum, however trying to police the spam would be a full time job! Maybe the way it has been done here, (a certain number of posts before having access) would help, but spam is the biggest problem I can see!!
Chris

[whiteRabbit]

Spam can be a problem, but I hear some people suggesting to not be a control freak at the beginning.  Spam is ... yes a problem, but if it's a minor duplicate post, kind of let it go for a little while to get messages posted. Prioritize populating the board.  Would you agree or not?

[CoastPC]

I see the way your thinking, populating your new board, I also see the spam problem you may create. IMHO, if your not careful, it could end up like a Free For All links board!
    Content, I believe, is what you want your visitors to come to your site for!! Weather your selling, products,  information, advertising, or just giving information away its the content that is important!!
    Be careful you dont end up with 254 members posting 254 links!  </rant>  

Prioritize populating the board.  Would you agree or not?

Yes, agree, but how to populate is more important!
   I believe another way to get a forum going is ask 4 or 5 friends to back you up!  Rely on them posting regularly, chatting together!! The others will soon come! Most boards, if you look closely, have a few core, posting members! They may have 400 members, but not too many post regularly!  
  My little old board has 100+ members, but you wouldnt think so to look at it!!   In our case, the web-site is the meat, the forum is the gravy!
As Usual, my 2 cents....
Hope it helps...
Chris
   
     

[SensoVision]

actually folks already tell what I wish to say but I answer as well to let you know my opinion

I am in the middle of creating a community forum.  While I work on a couple of suggestions made such as

what kind of community you wish to build? would it be about education and would be powered by your main site and directory or something else?

1. Create News and Accouchements category
1.1. Post news and accouchements pretty frequently
2. Create Suggestions and Feedback category
2.1. Ask people to post messages in Suggestions and Feedback category,

yup I agree with all things you mention here...  actually lacking of suggestion board is problem of some communities or on some it's presented but ignored by mods which make people go away as well. So not only create and ask people to post there but also let them know your opinions and implement features they ask for or give reason why you can't do this...

I am considering another thing to get visitors to post messages.  I am considering to create General Chat/Promotion category for site owners/maintainers (of related sites) to post a promotion type message.  Is this a good idea?  Has anyone tried something like this?

actually it's a problem since it could be good for new community but later people start to overuse it... if I would start new community I'd probably create board for promotion but let there post after becoming regular member of community...  but in reality it's not useful to anyone... I think that signatures is much more powerfull thing so I would rather encourage people to place their sites in profile and signature.  Also making just single board isn't good IMHO since all ads would be there... and it would be hard to read when you community grow bigger but from other side you wouldn't have so much issues with SPAM if create some rules for this board which allow to post there almost everything...
(also I would like to mention that we probably get rid Hosting and Domain offers in future... since I don't really see that people read them and people who post them actively participate in our community...).

Spam can be a problem, but I hear some people suggesting to not be a control freak at the beginning.  Spam is ... yes a problem, but if it's a minor duplicate post, kind of let it go for a little while to get messages posted. Prioritize populating the board.  Would you agree or not?

yes it's good but from other side I really hate when some forum when become bigger just transferring from friendly community to something hostile and full of rules... I think it's bad so if you plan to have rules try to implement them from beginning maybe so you would get only members who are happy with them...
here we try to have as less as possible rules as I believe that best way for growing community is let it regulate itself...

   Content, I believe, is what you want your visitors to come to your site for!! Weather your selling, products,  information, advertising, or just giving information away its the content that is important!!

exactly!

I believe another way to get a forum going is ask 4 or 5 friends to back you up!  Rely on them posting regularly, chatting together!! The others will soon come! Most boards, if you look closely, have a few core, posting members! They may have 400 members, but not too many post regularly!  

that's what I wish to say... if you have such team of friends who talk all the time you wouldn't believe how fast such community could grow... I saw few examples like ND, as they use such sheme and they grow at least twice faster as our community since here I have to start it myself and doesn't have any friends who could help me... so that's why it takes so long us to get members and such(but I  think there is no hurry in this thing, I think that speed of grow isn't main parameter for communities anyway, the main is members who participate in it and make it helpful for other peoples).

[Shan]

Hi, is there any one.

[Hans]

Would u help me to creat a chat site plz

[Andy]

Sure, the first step is to register a domain name and get hosting. Step 1: Click here to start making a chat site

p.s. there is some really good advice about starting up a forum in this thread that I don't remember reading before.