Interests of helping me?

[NSanityHD]

Hello fellow members of the GTA Place Forums!

I was wondering if any of you members are Interested in helping me with a Forum. If your Interested please PM me and I will give you the link to the Forum I need help with.

Thanks!

Regards,

Kel

[smallpancake]

I have a better idea; Lets improve this one!

[NSanityHD]

Okay.... and how do we do that?

[Huckleberry Pie]

Okay.... and how do we do that?

Do you already have a server, or a space from your host for you to start a forum?

[Gerard]

He said he would link you to the forum, so that would imply it already exists.

Considering you didn't mention what the forum was about, it doesn't look good. You just want any staff to help out? Surely if it is a GTA forum you need staff who are interested in GTA, same with everything else.

You'd be better off staying here and improving this one than starting a tiny empty one of your own. How? Just post lots of useful stuff (without spamming), help people by answering questions and write content for the main site.

I should point out that you aren't allowed to link to invisionfree forums or any shitty free sites like that. And try not to spam links everywhere - keep it in your signature.

[NSanityHD]

Yes, thanks for the information Gerard!

The Forum is called iPB.Source (Invision Power Board. Source). it's hosted by iPBFree. Just type that url in the address bar with .com after it. you'll see what it's hosted by. If you don't want me to ask for staff + members for it because it's 'iPBFree' then I'll buy an IPB License on IPS. I was thinking about making a 'GTA' Forum, but all us GTA players have this Forum to be apart of. I didn't want to copy the GTA Place Forums by having a GTA Forum also. So I named it iPB.Source.

I will keep by the rules, and not advertise it without permission!

regards,

Kel

[TM™]

Yes, thanks for the information Gerard!

The Forum is called iPB.Source (Invision Power Board. Source). it's hosted by iPBFree. Just type that url in the address bar with .com after it. you'll see what it's hosted by. If you don't want me to ask for staff + members for it because it's 'iPBFree' then I'll buy an IPB License on IPS. I was thinking about making a 'GTA' Forum, but all us GTA players have this Forum to be apart of. I didn't want to copy the GTA Place Forums by having a GTA Forum also. So I named it iPB.Source.

I will keep by the rules, and not advertise it without permission!

regards,

Kel

Since this is a few days old, I'd like to give a bit of advice.

First off, there's no problem whatsoever with making a GTA Forum as long as you make a original name up, but make sure it sounds catchy, that's how you get some members to join up. Secondly, You're thinking of buying a IPB License eh? Well good luck with that as it cost's alot of money, but if you do get it eventually, you'll see how good IPB is for you. Thidrly, when you purchase IPB, you need a bit of knowledge with a FTP Client which you use to set up the files in your server/host. Instruction's will be setted up inside your documentation. Fourthly, You must be good at designing, so making skins for your website will be the trickiest of your job (Trust me on that one, I've skinned before). If you want your site to go big though, you might want to go further and make a news page which is tough to do. Best to download a CMS Script and place it in your host, then the design part comes again.

Also, make sure that you're on their at least a few times a week, you don't want a site without a active webmaster, do you?' I for one run a site, but it's not the best site ever as I'm trying to improve it. So whenever you start a website, make sure you know some basic stuff about FTP Clients and Web Servers, sometimes it's confusing, sometimes it's clean and simply, but you must be at the top of your standards to give what your members want out of the site.

Gerard has a good point too, I believe TGTAP is good site too, but starting a site isn't as easy. You might want to stick around here for a while and get this place improved, by posting some articles related to other games and GTA, help members that are stuck with modding or missions etc.

Well, all I can say is good luck to you Ice. (:

[Gerard]

I said the above because there are literally hundreds of really bad tiny GTA-related forums, usually made by members of bigger forums. They are set up with the intentions of becoming a massive community, but they usually get forgotten within a couple of weeks and end up with six members (the friends of the webmaster) and they all have a handful of posts each. You can spot these forums because they have loads of categories (eg Vice City Stories) with no posts in.

Generally if someone is going to set up a forum half-heartedly, they'll use a free host. We used to have a big problem with people setting up a free forum in 2 minutes then going round advertising it as if it was amazingly good. A couple of people would go to see what it was about, and that would be it. But when we have lots of those happening every week, it just became spamming, so we outlawed it.

To make a new GTA forum successful at all, it needs to be special. That doesn't mean it has to have a pretty colour for its skin or have a funny name - it needs to be unique and have something the other existing forums don't have. For example, The GTA Place became popular because it was one of the first sites with a massive downloads database, which made it special, so lots of people came here.

If you're confident you can make your site special, and you know you are going to put the work in to make it good and get a lot of people to visit it, then you should probably invest in your own hosting, a domain name and an IPB license (or vBulletin if you prefer) - that way you have total control over the site, and it isn't cluttered in adverts.

If you can't be bothered, or you don't think it's going to work - don't waste your time by setting it up, annoying people by advertising it, then closing it down or forgetting about it a week later. If you can be bothered, you need to stick with it.

[NSanityHD]

Well, I have done the database for my GTA Forum, I have a name (GTA-Sector) I am on the part of uploading the files. When should I advertise it, and how?

[MrLlamaLlama]

I wouldn't say it's too early to start advertising now... if you have the intention of having the forum up soon.

You could say: GTA - Sector coming (date) to build interest and stuff. a link in your sig will do.

News sites always tend to be an uphill struggle. It's always a little shaky getting to know the ropes, the lingo, the whole process of it all. And it's always annoying WHEN things go wrong (not IF) I should know. I'm relying on sub - par amounts of knowledege, and a little bit of luck, but i'm getting on, and maybe someday i'll be able to keep it all at a comfortable, manageable level. (not working my ass off because things always go wrong)

Bear in mind it's not one of those 'finger in many pies jobbies (we all know someone like that..don't we?) if you want it to be a success. Stick at it, you'll get back what you put in.

Good luck to you.

[NSanityHD]

I wouldn't say it's too early to start advertising now... if you have the intention of having the forum up soon.

You could say: GTA - Sector coming (date) to build interest and stuff. a link in your sig will do.

News sites always tend to be an uphill struggle. It's always a little shaky getting to know the ropes, the lingo, the whole process of it all. And it's always annoying WHEN things go wrong (not IF) I should know. I'm relying on sub - par amounts of knowledege, and a little bit of luck, but i'm getting on, and maybe someday i'll be able to keep it all at a comfortable, manageable level. (not working my ass off because things always go wrong)

Bear in mind it's not one of those 'finger in many pies jobbies (we all know someone like that..don't we?) if you want it to be a success. Stick at it, you'll get back what you put in.

Good luck to you.

OK. Thanks MrLlamaLlama.

To all

Thanks for all of your replies people. I will hopefully release GTA - Sector in 1 month and 2 weeks. So GTA - Sector will be released on the 25th of December. ( On Christmas, isn't that awesome? )

I'll try and make or request for a signature banner for it. I wouldn't mind Chris, Chris82, etc etc, to be staff either. In-fact that would be great!

I suppose I'd better get to work.

I will have the actual forum advertised in my Signature, but the forum will be offline.

I was also thinking of using IPSwitch FTP Professional program to upload files. (What do you think?)

Regards,

Ice

Edited November 14, 2007 by I©e