Moderate a discussion board ?

[Evilhalfling]

I started my first professional job as an urban planner two weeks ago,
and My boss has asked me to explore the possibilities of running the content side of a new professional message board.
*ENworld as a job skill WHEEE!!!*

It is supposed to start small and issue focused, but I will be doing content, moderating and
setting up rules and disclaimers.

Do you folks have any advice or suggestions?

 

[Evilhalfling]

sigh.

 

[The Thayan Menace]

RE: Message Board

Do you folks have any advice or suggestions?

Perhaps. Are you required to use a certain system ... or can you choose your own provider?

-Samir

 

[Michael Morris]

ENWorld uses vbulletin 3.0, and the latest version is 3.6 -- but that is a $160 of software. If that's outside your budget then phpBB is a workable alternative.

If you need to set up a full CMS for the board you might want to use Joomla instead. Joomla has a forum module, but it's minimal.

 

[Umbran]

It is supposed to start small and issue focused, but I will be doing content, moderating and
setting up rules and disclaimers.

Do you folks have any advice or suggestions?

Well, if it is important to start small, and issue focused, perhaps keeping your questions smaller and issue-focused would help. "Any adivice or suggestions" is pretty broad. Different folks here have different skills, and we don't know yet which bits of information you need. Do you need to know about the software? Or what to consider in choosing your code of conduct? Or about advertising revenue?

 

[Piratecat]

Don't sigh sadly on a pre-christmas weekend!

I strongly recommend starting with only one forum, or two at most. Then add more as needed, but only when you have so much traffic on a given subject that it's distracting.

Too many people don't do this, and it's often the death knell for getting critical mass. People show up when there's the appearance of activity, and keeping everything in one forum for as long as possible really helps that.

 

[Greylock]

Greylock, there's no place here for cross-board hostility and snide remarks. I'd have thought that'd have been clear by now.

 

[Dimwhit]

My advice...if you can't spring for vBulletin, DON'T use phpbb. Use Simple Machines instead.

 

[Piratecat]

What's Simple Machines, Dimwhit? I'm not familiar with it.

 

[Dimwhit]

What's Simple Machines, Dimwhit? I'm not familiar with it.

http://www.simplemachines.org/

It's just a free forum system like phpbb. But I think it's quite a bit better. For one thing, it had a built-in attachment feature, unlike phpbb. But all in all, I think it's a better script for forums, at least as far as the free ones go.