Mistakes

[Martee]

What would you say was the biggest mistake that you have made in your time of owning a forum? It can be any form you've ever owned.

For me, I think my biggest was mistake was starting up a forum and instantly thinking "haha, I've seen no other forums in this niche. This will make me uber $$ and popular forum super quick!". Of course, I was wrong and I closed it due to time constraints but that was back when I was a naive person. What about you lot? What was your buggest mistake?

 

[Sam1]

A forum, or a website?

My biggest mistake as a forum owner would be: Not keeping a lot of backups :/
My biggest mistake as a webmaster would be: Not keeping backups AND clicking on my own ads.

 

[Martee]

Seems you have a problem with back-ups there buddy! Surely you could automate something like that? And I know where you're coming from on the click your own ads one, haha. Thought it would get more money eh? I did..

 

[Sam1]

Yep, well for my teen job site it crashed around 3-4 times and had to be completely restarted- I really should have automated backups every day, but I didn't know how to then..... As for clicking my own ads- that was also on my teen job site (which I have sold, for $10 as it had a month left on the domain but was PR4- it's now used for link selling). They displayed stupid forex ads and other stuff that meant the click through rate was way too low, so I bumped it up to 2%. Unfortunately it all backfired one day when I was logged into my adsense account and I clicked on an ad. I knew I was busted and the next morning when I went on the computer I had the dreaded invalid click activity email The loss of the ads and the crashes killed the site.

Note I wasn't running it by myself- but with a friend....

 

[Martee]

Three to four times? Ouch man! I bet that didn't go down well with your sites users!
That would suck man, I know how you feel though, I had the same problem as I clicked my ads alot thinking "Weeeeee, free money!" and then a lovely email graced my inbox.

As long as you learn from those mistakes though, they are mistakes worth making.

 

[Sam1]

Well the thing was we basically took the jobs off the government student job site, so we pretty much had no repeat visitors- although we did have 100 visits a day. We even got a couple of emails saying that the site was pointless, they didn't realize we'd emailed about 100 businesses trying to get them to post jobs on there..... It was a tough site to run and if I were to start something similar I'd have $500 not $50....

 

[bcousins]

I bought Forum Hotel. Enough said.

 

[Martee]

I bought Forum Hotel. Enough said.

Whys that a mistake? Ive never used FH is all, just wondering.

Sam , I see what you mean there, I had the same problem with my site! Mine was a student forum for students obviously and many people said it was a stupid choice and whatnot but like you, they didn't realise that we were openly writing to a lot of businesses to get them to sponsor the forum and whatnot. The harder forums/site are to run the bigger the reward though IMO!


Sent from my wonderful iPad using Tapatalk! 'Apple > Windows'

 

[flame]

my biggest mistake was trying to move a community to a new domain, with a new look and new rules all at once - it allowed a copycat site i was unaware of at the time to successfully steal just about all my community and the new site failed.

looking back with the wonderful 20/20 vision of hindsight i should have made the move less "new" - at the time it had to be a new domain as my domain was "won" from a free host who had stopped transferring paid for domains yet alone free one, and i had major issues with the host. however i should have kept the appearance on the new one the same as the old one and not redrawn all the rules. the copycat kept a similar appearance and similar rule structure and faced with the choice everyone went for what was familar.

there is one saving grace though - the free host started doing transfers again and i was able to get the old domain off them just in time - so i can re establish - hopefully - the domain that was successful

 

[Alucard]

As I am still pretty new to this game I have yet to invest in something so maybe inaction is my only mistake. one of the posts above caught my attention. I guess I direct my question here in a similar manner to the one following bcousins: Why was your purchase a bad one or so you make it appear? If you bought it, I would guess that the site had some sort of appeal?

 

[Shole]

Not working hard enough at it and trusting everybody to have more permissions then they should. That's why now no of my mods can delete a topic.

 

[Martee]

Not working hard enough at it and trusting everybody to have more permissions then they should. That's why now no of my mods can delete a topic.

Got to love permissions don't you lol? One of the biggest source of annoyance on many forums. I'm guessing your mods went around deleting alot of stuff?

 

[Sam1]

my biggest mistake was trying to move a community to a new domain, with a new look and new rules all at once - it allowed a copycat site i was unaware of at the time to successfully steal just about all my community and the new site failed.

looking back with the wonderful 20/20 vision of hindsight i should have made the move less "new" - at the time it had to be a new domain as my domain was "won" from a free host who had stopped transferring paid for domains yet alone free one, and i had major issues with the host. however i should have kept the appearance on the new one the same as the old one and not redrawn all the rules. the copycat kept a similar appearance and similar rule structure and faced with the choice everyone went for what was familar.

there is one saving grace though - the free host started doing transfers again and i was able to get the old domain off them just in time - so i can re establish - hopefully - the domain that was successful

URGH That's gotta suck!! What was the community about?

 

[flame]

it was just a general discussion forum - which with my own hosting i want to develop into a proper community with more than just a forum.

still the resurrection is underway - and i will try and get at least some of the old posters back

 

[Shole]

Got to love permissions don't you lol? One of the biggest source of annoyance on many forums. I'm guessing your mods went around deleting alot of stuff?

Brilliant guess almost It was one mod deleting around half of the forum :S well lesson learned the hard way.

 

[Martee]

Brilliant guess almost It was one mod deleting around half of the forum :S well lesson learned the hard way.

Nearly! Do I get a prize? But that must've sucked :/ I hope you managed to recover from it though but thats the problem nowadays. Do you know what set the the mod off or was he just on a random rampage?

 

[Jason1]

My biggest mistake, closing down a forum which had decent members and PR 1 due to low funds and improper decision making

 

[Shole]

Nearly! Do I get a prize? But that must've sucked :/ I hope you managed to recover from it though but thats the problem nowadays. Do you know what set the the mod off or was he just on a random rampage?

Well I did recover the forum not so much. I told him he should post better quality posts and that he isn't allowed to break the staff rules and he got angry :S.

 

[Martee]

Well I did recover the forum not so much. I told him he should post better quality posts and that he isn't allowed to break the staff rules and he got angry :S.

He got angry because he had to follow STAFF rules when he was staff? What a joker, lol. As long as your forum is still up and running though, thats all that counts.

 

[Shole]

He got angry because he had to follow STAFF rules when he was staff? What a joker, lol. As long as your forum is still up and running though, thats all that counts.

The forum is long gone. I mean he thought he was above everyone like he was the best XD