How do i setup a private forum

This involves restricting forum access to selected members. The ongoing contribution of content by forum members is what gives a forum its character. Here are the most effective ways to maintain a vibrant, dynamic online community. Stay on track: A sense of shared interest among participants is the glue that holds your community together.

When too many threads are available, visitors especially first-time visitors can get overwhelmed. Too many topics may also lead to a situation in which some threads have only very little conversation going on in them. Make it beautiful: While forums thrive on words, their look and feel is also important. By customizing the layout, fonts, colors and more, you can design your forum in a way that reflects your project or brand and attracts new members.

Be proactive, answer questions, start conversations and encourage community members to share their thoughts. Stay informed: As the admin, you also need to show expertise and authority in your field. Keeping up to date on the latest news, developments and trends will help you add high-quality content to your community and keep your members interested in what you have to say.

Turn your forum into a reliable source of information and your community will reward you with traffic. Remember to regularly check for the following elements, as this will ensure a safe, friendly and positive community:. Spammers: Spammy content is not only annoying, but it can cause SEO problems. Trolls: As forum admin, you bear the responsibility to ensure that all forum members are safe, and you owe it to them to keep trolls away.

By default bbPress will use a page template in your theme root folder. It will look for the existence of several files in the following order, using the first one it finds. To get bbpress to use a different template from the one your theme is using just copy that template and rename it bbpress.

This is explained a bit more below. You can even find that bbPress appears differently when displaying the forum index than it does with topics, which is probably not what you want. If not, then the following will let you set bbPress up in the way you want. If you then open the various page. So once you know which page template file you need, copy this and rename the copy to bbpress.

If you want to customise the layout for your forums, you can then do this within this file. For most sites, the forum is part of a larger experience, and it is really useful to have a separate sidebar for the forum page that has forum specific widgets on it.

If your forum is all that is on your site, then the default sidebar may be all you need. But If you want to add a sidebar just for your bbPress pages then please follow this tutorial. Creating a bbpress specific sidebar.

Now you go to the Custom Links section to your left and enter the url of the form you want to lead them to. The bbPress Codex is volunteer-powered, which means you can contribute too! Let's discover our best forums on our board directory. Discover Forumotion forums. A forum, or message board, allows you to have your own discussion space on which you share with your community your knowledge.

If you don't find a forum that fits with your wish, the best solution is to create your own forum and build your private community. Feel free to talk about any passions by creating a private forum. To make a private forum for a confidential or secret community, Forumotion free forum hosting service is the perfect solution. You can create a private forum or personal message board with registration by invitation only and nonpublic features. Having a private forum has many advantages.

This solution can perfectly fit with a small community, like an association, a video game clan, a school or a company. Indeed, a private forum helps to create discussions non visible to guests. Moreover, registrations can be checked by the administrators to have complete control over the forum. Thus, a user won't be able to access the forum content but only the connection page. If you decide to create a private forum, this latter won't be indexed.

If you are already active in other forums, you can add a link to your forum in your signature. Search online for other forums that are related to your niche. Start contributing to discussions there and add a link to your signature. Make posts to your forum.

As the originator, you should be making posts all the time. Respond to posts by your members and start topics that will provoke conversations among the members. If you have members that are active in your community, you can have them be moderators so that they will be encouraged to stick around and post more. ProBoards is a great place to start a forum. They don't need software experience, plus they're free.

The only downside is there are banner ads. Yes No. Not Helpful 2 Helpful 5. Why would a company want to host a forum for free? Do they use it for advertising, or do they expect payment at some point?

Proboards, at least, has banner ads or a paid option to get rid of them. It's ad revenue. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 1. Yes, but one of you has to be an administrator. The other will just be a moderator. Not Helpful 3 Helpful 0. Include your email address to get a message when this question is answered.