Years ago I started and ran a local music forum. I mostly did it because I was a DJ and had such an interest in music, as well as for the experience of doing it, to see what it entailed, etc. I never monetized it and eventually I let it die out.
Recently I wanted to give it another go, but this time monetize the forums. I say “forums” because you need more than one. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of money in monetized forums, unless you have a few that have a lot of active members and traffic. I went with a music forum again because I have a genuine interest in that, and I feel as though I would be more committed in seeing that type of online community grow. I picked out a few other domains also but I’ll discuss them in a later post.
So I registered the domain name, “HipHopForums.org”. Next I needed a forum software. Initially I was torn between two; vBulletin and SMF (Simple Machines Forums). vBulletin requires you to purchase their license (you could lease also). Currently the license is $195, whereas the SMF software is Open Source and Free. Hmm let me think… This is tough… Free it is! lol.
Now I needed a theme for the forum. I wanted it to be kind of plain using blue or a bright red color and it definitely had to be easy to navigate through the forums. I found a nice clean red theme called “stylized”; I made a few minor edits and walah! A nice looking Hip hop forum!
I was worried about what I would use as a header image because I’m not that creative with graphics. I know the header would make or break the site (cosmetically). Fortunately I used to DJ for a group back in the early 90’s who happen to be celebrities now. So I took out a CD; scanned it; put it in Photoshop; cropped it; and just played around with the layer styles (outer glow, inner glow, satin, etc) until something accidentally looked nice. ha ha ha, but I’m serious. lol. Then I did the same thing with the text: inner glow, satin, bevel, anything I could click on. lol and it turned out pretty nice. I figured I would just use what I made myself until my forum gets more traffic. Once I get more traffic, I’ll set up a contest or something where I would offer a prize for the person who creates the best header image for my site. Until then, I am pretty happy on how the site looks.
I also needed a way to display advertisements on my forum. SMF is just a one column forum, but I found a great little mod called TinyPortal. This mod expands SMF by giving it a frontpage, articles, panels (top, upper, left, right, bottom, & lower), among other things. The panels are what I was looking for to hold advertisements. Right now I just put a couple of amazon.com advertisements on my site until I get more traffic. Of course the ads are for PS3 slim and DJ Hero! I guess I was a little biased when selecting what to advertise. lol. I’m joking,
In case anyone else is starting a forum, I’ll mention a few mods that I really liked:
- NotifyOn mod – This mod will automatically set the email notification to on. This way when someone replies to a members post, that member will receive an email informing them. This is a good way to keep members actively participating in the forum.
- Custom Profile mod – This allows you to add custom fields in the members profile. I used it to add a field for their myspace page, twitter page, facebook page, as well as a Bio section.
- Reputation mod – This mimics the reputation feature I’ve seen on vBulletin forums and replaces the Karma feature completely. I really like this mod.
- Flash Chat – This isn’t a mod, but rather exactly what the name implies: a chat room (via Flash plugin). This is such a great addition to any forum. It integrates with the SMF forums and uses member’s logins etc. I simply created a menu button (via TinyPortal block) to trigger the chat room.
Ok well I guess that’s it for now. I’m exhausted; I’m just going to relax and sit back and watch a movie! 
Liked this article? Please use the icons below to share this article.
