Hi i run MOT

but i have been getting no members.

i have read all the help articles here and have advertised the forum everywhere i can think of but it just seems like all my hard work is pointless.

Sadly i cannot afford to have a Vb or full IPB forum so have to work with my free one, and have no money to spend on it so am trying to do everything for free.

can anyone give me some help about making my forum more ' user friendly' and is there anything bigger that im missing or not doing correctly?

Jake

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Well, for starters, when I first visit your forums, I have no clue what they are about. I see a car and I see MOT, but I don't know what that means...It obviously has something to do with cars, but that doesn't tell me much. It would be good to make it clear to your visitors what your forums are about - tell them what they can do in your forums.

Another big thing that stood out to me was the lack of posts in most of your sections. You don't want to have 0 posts in any of your sections. Additionally, most of the sections that do have posts haven't had a post since September - that's not good either. Both of these things suggest that there isn't actually anybody in your forums for me to talk to...As a visitor, this doesn't encourage me to register, because it looks like I may just end up talking to myself. So, in order to fix this problem, you need to post actively yourself, you need to recruit friends to post, and you need to participate in post exchanges. Check out PostFusion

Ok, so now you're thinking..."I can't use PostFusion since I'm on ipbfree." ...and that brings me to my last point

Free, hosted forums like that are not always the best way to go, because they restrict you from so much. My strongest recommendation, of course, would be to buy your own domain and hosting. You can get a domain for as little as $6-7 per year and good hosting for as little as $3-5 per month. This is actually very cheap, especially if you monetize your forums with ads and what not.

That said, if you can't spend a dime on anything, there are better free solutions out there other than ipbfree...There are quite a few free webhosts, I even own one myself at No Catch ...There you'll get a free domain, free space, free bandwidth, and most importantly, you are able to upload your OWN files, install your OWN forums, use your OWN database, etc.

Honestly, if I were you at this point, I would abandon your current ipbfree forum and either go with paid hosting or an alternative free hosting solution (where you can upload your own forums). Transferring ipbfree forums later on down the road is going to be a huge hassle...If you're going to do it, it's best to do it early on.

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...some super-sweet signature

And expensive, if the forum has grown to a decent size....

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I never knew that you could transfer ipbfree forums.

And if i was you i would ditch Ipbfree, and get nocatch.net hosting, and install PHPBB or SMF or one of the others that are free. You can install this forum within seconds without uploading a single file. With the application manager. And they are fully customizable.

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Immortality will come to such as are fit for it

Ryan has given you all the advice you need to get your forum started, do keep in mind that a forum requires a lot of effort and dedication to run.

You don't need tons of money or paid forum scripts, what you do need is a vision and resolve to work hard on it!

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India Travel Forum | Why most forums fail within 1 year! | Free Travel Directory

Amen.

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Where's Waldo?, Book Club, Scavenger Hunt, Role Playing, Travel Guide, Photos, Videos and more.
TalkWhatever.com - Blogs, Social Groups and Forum

Look into free forum software or lesser expensive costs that can transfer your information over from in conjunction with a free hosting you can have your own site that you can handle for just the cost of registering a domain.

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TheBiggestBoards - See where your forum ranks - Size Matters!

cheers for all the help guys.

i will sign up to No Catch and get SMF forum once i can think of a decent name lol

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