Share your experience with a fresh admin

[Cedric]

I thought it'd be fun and nice if we could all share an experience we've had to warn/learn a newcomer admin. What would you tell a new admin? I have some questions ready but you're free to add your own. I will most likely make an article of the best experiences we can gather.

What things have you learned in your time being an admin that you wish you knew before starting out?
What has changed throughout the years ?
What's the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a forum?


What things have you learned in your time being an admin that you wish you knew before starting out?
Content is key. If you don't have decent content and focus on rather generic topics, you will not succeed. You want your members to come to your forum for a reason. Quality content is a good reason. Numbers and statistics are not important and you should not be focusing on that.

What has changed throughout the years ?
Members no longer seek to find and join communities. In most cases they are comfortable on forums that already exist. So again, you will need great content to lure in members and get them to stay.

What's the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a forum?
For one, there is a big gap between free and paid software, but it's not mandatory to go with paid. You can find the greatest communities on free softwares. I would start out small and simple, yet focus on content.

 

[Cory]

What things have you learned in your time being an admin that you wish you knew before starting out?
Don't let other people use your work before you are absolutely sure you want them to. I say this coming from InisionFree, where there was this special board created for a handful of members to help improve InvisionFree. At the time, I built a code index of every code posted on InvisionFree on my own board, but I ended up sharing the code index with this special board and it was posted on the official support board under the staff members username, I did not receive a single recognition for sharing this code index with the official support board and the staff took all of the recognition essentially. This code index is what made my board stand out from other resource boards and there were a lot of code links in this code index, it was pretty massive. Always keep your content unique and fresh, and try not to let others take it away from you.

What has changed throughout the years?
Activity primarily, of course. Once social media came along everyone started admiring something that gave them instant gratification. Forums are much more inactive nowadays because of the creation of social media. There are some pros to this, however, where there's not as much spam, trolls, flaming, drama, etc. But, it still doesn't take away the fact that compared to social media, forums feel like a thing of the past almost.

What's the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a forum?
Creating a forum for something you are passionate about is one thing that always keeps a forum going. If you are passionate about your forum subject, you are actively engaging in something that majorly interests you. Creating a forum for the sake of having a forum you're not necessarily passionate about is grounds for closing the forum down in the foreseeable future.

 

[Arantor]

What things have you learned in your time being an admin that you wish you knew before starting out?
There's a few things for sure, some of them in hindsight are obvious life lessons but somehow I'd dodged learning them in regular life!

I think the first one for me is simply to not be so trusting. I remember starting out in the forum hey-day, 2006 or so, and there were no shortages of people who'd offer to be moderators for you. I learned - eventually - that just because people *ask* didn't make them qualified, even if they said they were...

Second, don't let people abuse your good will/free time/good nature/etc. - similar to the points made above, people can and will use your work in ways you didn't intend, didn't expect and don't really approve of. People will try and take you for a ride, because that's just how people are, unfortunately.

What has changed throughout the years ?
I think the most *expected* answer here is social media, but I think the rise of 'the socials' was always inevitable. It's a hard lesson on the nature of centralised vs decentralised resources - people will go to the place that has everything, most of the time. It's why they'll go to the mall with the generic stores for their general needs, and seek out the specialist places when they have a specialist need.

But probably the biggest - and most insidious, to my mind - change isn't even 'the socials'. It's the commercialisation. Back when I started web dev, at the turn of the millennium, and when I later started running a forum, it was still a truly decent amount of hobbyists representing. The majority of forums were individuals trying to build a community, and any profit from it - if any, many didn't bother - was simply to absorb hosting fees and so on.

It feels like so many more people now run forums as income generation machines, which I personally find pretty soulless.

What's the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a forum?
You're building a place to bring people together. Yes, people come for the content, but that's not why they stay. They stay for the other people. It's all about the people. They're the key.

 

[Heatman]

What things have you learned in your time being an admin that you wish you knew before starting out?

Human management skills is very important when it comes to successfully running a forum. If you lack in this sector or skill, it's going to be very difficult for you to mount any good progress in running your forum.

Also there's nothing like too much content when it comes to forums. If you can have more, by all means please do and make sure they are of high quality. A forum without high quality contents is dead in the waters already.


What has changed throughout the years ?

The boom and success of social media have been a thorn in the flesh of forums. It was never like this before but that's the reality now. This is why you have to make sure to have more and more interesting high quality contents in your forum because that's the only way to keep it toe to toe with social media sites.

What's the most important thing to keep in mind when creating a forum?

You can't run your forum alone. It's never possible because there's no way you can be online 24/7/365. You will need help with having staff members. Look for the right people that's going to help you achieve your goals.