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Putting a free forum on your website - Simple Machines Forum

On the way to the forum …

Inspired by my first foray into the world of the ‘…for Dummies’ books, I’m now reading one on web marketing and going through it with a pencil marking the various pointers, tips and useful bits I’m going to use in my own marketing stategy.

I’m delighted that the first two marketing books I’ve read recommend among many other things that each site you build should have a forum, to encourage users to return to your site rather than making a one-off visit.

In fact, the latest book I’m reading features this in the chapter called ‘Pulling Repeat Visitors with Onsite Marketing Techniques’ … what greater endorsement do you need?

I’m pleased to say, unlike blogging and newsletters, this is something I’d already committed to a while ago.

Talking milk, castles and cars …

I’ve put a forum on all ten of my sites, though I will admit, I don’t have high expectations of them all being a goer.

Forums which I do hope will take off, alongside the websites they’re based on are:

webcumbria.co.uk forum, for small businesses (primarily in my home county of Cumbria) developing a web presence.

castle-visits.co.uk forum, for people who like to visit and photograph castles (this is a personal interest, so this website is an outlet for me rather than being a commercial concern).

doorstep-delivery.co.uk forum, for milkmen.

your-local-shop.co.uk forum, for shop keepers.

80spoplover forum, for lovers of the 80s. Again, this is a personal interest site, rather than a commercial site, so if it covers its costs, I’ll be happy.

scrap-yard.co.uk forum, for scrap yard operators.

Each of these forums has a specific ‘community of interest’, that is a distinctive group which will have something to say - a viewpoint if you want - and as far as I can tell, with the exception of the 80s and castles forum, don’t currently have somewhere to express their views. If you know otherwise, please contact me as I’d like to see what else is ‘out there’.

To chat or not to chat?

Other forums I’ve produced I’m less sure of … mainly because I’m not convinced people will want to engage in those topics, or because I think they’re already well represented on the web.

Examples of these forums are:

weirdbits.co.uk forum, this is the site on which I originally ‘cut my teeth’ with php, working with two friends from work, but I think social networking may have knocked this type of site on the head now.

expatchat.co.uk forum, a discussion forum for expats who are already very well represented on the web.

big-group-cottages forum, one of my key commercial sites, but strangely I’d be very surprised if the forum kicked off, even though I think the site itself is a goer.

So how do you put a forum together?

All of my foums are made with SMF - Simple Machines Forum - which I’ve settled on as the piece of kit that I prefer.

I tried phpBB at first, because I liked its look, but I moved on to SMF fairly swiftly because it seemed to get spammed almost as soon as I’d launched the forums.

I’m sure if I had played around enough with the configuration, I’d have been able to sort this, but a friend was using SMF and told me I wouldn’t experience the same problems … and to be honest, I haven’t.

SMF is available via Fantastico, so as ever, you don’t have to be too much of a website whizz to get it going.

So, why am I getting on so well with SMF?

- It’s easy to set up, user-friendly and not-too-teccie

- It’s easy to change the template to give it the look you want

- You can lock it down easily to deter spammers

- There’s a good support network available if you get stuck

- It’s easy to change the configuration so that your posts are search engine friendly, essential for improving your site’s rankings

- It’s a dream to upgrade. This is worth noting, as not all php sites are a dream to update. SMF is delightfully easy to update, which is great news for me because I have 10 SMF sites!

Making your forum look good

It’s also worth a few words about templates.

You’ll notice that on all my forums I’ve hacked the code to include my own banners and a link back to my main website.

To make the necessary changes, navigate to Themes > default > index.template.php and in the section header_logo_url you need to add the following code, adpated to your own site of course:

<a href=”http://webcumbria.co.uk/content_section/index.phpoption=com_frontpage
&Itemid=1“>
<div align=”center”><img src=”‘, $settings['images_url'], ‘/smflogo.gif” style=”margin: 0px;” alt=”Image is used by kind permission of Nick Collinge at ww.nickcollinge.co.uk” /><p><font size=”2″ face=”Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”><a href=”http://webcumbria.co.uk/content_section/index.phpoption=com_frontpage
&Itemid=1“>
Take me back to the webcumbria.co.uk homepage</font></p><td align=”centre” class=”catbg”></td></table>’;

Red = your homepage URL (for the banner link)

Green = Your banner alt tag

Blue = your homepage URL (for the text link)

Purple = the text you require under the banner

Also note that you have to overwrite smflogo.gif with your own banner, or else you get the Simple Machines Forum banner.

The other thing you can do, pretty easily, is to change the images next to each forum to customise the site a little more.

All the images that you need to change are in the Themes > default > images folder, including smflogo.gif which I mentioned earlier.

The images you need to overwrite to get your own logo or graphic next to the posts are off.gif and on.gif, as well as off2gif and on2gif.

The on and off images should be different as they indicate whether there are new posts or not.

At the time of writing mine are all the same a) because the sites aren’t launched and there are no posts yet b) because it took me a while to realise what I’ve just told you and I haven’t got around to cutting the different images yet.

SMF and beyond

Let me know how you get on with SMF and if you’ve found a forum which is simpler or better, please contact me.

Incidentally, I have a friend who’s already running a successful forum at digitaltvcumbria.info and although this site does a lot of business, he’s mentioned to me that people seem unwilling to post in the forums.

If you’ve experience in this area and have managed to get people talking in your forums, please pass on your experience in the comments on this page, or contact me.

I’ll be returning to my friend’s websites at a later date, as we’re both very much at the same stage in the process of launching multiple sites at the moment, but we’re going about it in slightly different ways.

In the meantime, check out berkeleygrange.com and I’ll return to it in a future blog.