Creating Your Own Forum

The first thing you will need to do is set up your forum. if you do not already know how to do this, check out my hub on making and installing websites. Now for this article I will be using MyBB as the software of choice as that is the one on which I gave instructions on how to install on my other article.

The first thing you will need to do once your forum is installed is fix the settings according to the needs of your forum and the niche it is directed toward. Go to your configuration tab in the admin panel and go to settings. The first settings you should fix will be general configuration. Click on that and change your board name home page name, etc. to whatever you want them to be. Also make sure your email is changed to the email you want to be contacted at. Next I recommend going to Server optimization and select search engine friendly URL's as they will significantly help your forum's SEO. Feel free to go through the rest of the settings and decide which, if any, you want to change from default, the rest are usually according to personal preference.

In my opinion, themes are one of the most important things I look at in a forum. If a forum has an ugly theme, odds are I will not be returning to it any time soon. You can get themes for free on the MyBB website, as well as a few others you can find on google (or check links at the end of this article). The color of the theme you will want for your forum will most likely depend on the niche of your forum. For example, if you have a forum about blackhat money making methods or gaming, you may want a darker color scheme, but if you have a forum about music or an advice forum, you might want lighter colors. This may also depend on personal preference, so the choice is ultimately up to you.

One of the great features of MyBB is the huge amount of plugins available for free. Plugins include chatboxes, point systems, stores, and ad rotators, to name a few. A few plugins you almost have to have for a good forum are a chatbox and a forum stats widget for the home page. The chatbox lets users communicate with each other without the bother of having to go to a whole other private message page every time. The forum stats widget is important because it encourages activity among users. It shows the most reently commented on threads which allows users to continually see new thread and content. There are not many other sites that cary other mybb plugins than the MyBB site itself, but if you are looking for any specific plugin such as a store or points system, try googling it.