There was some forums and posts in the database that had to cleaned. I lost a couple hundred posts doing this so it wasn’t bad. I deleted all the subscriber forums which were the ones with the bad posts. The post contained warez and porn. While this is and will remian a general forum warez and porn is a no go for me.

The steps I took to get the site up and running took some time. There were hacks installed that caused 500 errors. I added back the hacks that caused the most problems. Once I was able to get the forum loaded I registered a new account. Then I used the tools.php to give that new account admin access. Once I did that I took over the main admin account and demoted all the old staff. Not to say I won’t bring them back. It’s just I don’t know them yet. Hopefully they will come back and once again become staff members.

Then I cleaned all the bad posts and reshuffled the forums. It was late so I called it a night.

This morning I finished the cleanup and optimization, added a default skin and came here to post this announcement. There are still some things to be done. I want to add a gallery, vbgallery since I have 2 unused licenses, an arcade and install vbexpierence again since it was part of the old site.

Without further ado I give you vBnt – General Forums.

The ste

I am in the process of buying a database from a site that closed a couple months ago. It is a vbulletin 3.8.6 database. I am leaning towards using vbulletin 4.1.1 for this site. I haven’t touched vbulletin in almost 6 months. The reason I am considering vbulletin on this site is to see how far the software has come. Judging by the comments and threads about 4.1.1 on the vbulletin forums it seems as if it is going in the right direction. Yes there are some negative replies, but, if you really look at those comments you’ll see it’s from the same group of disgruntled people. The users that left for another forum product that for whatever reason still hang out at vbulletin to make everyone uncomfortable.

I am willing to give anyone a second chance and this is vbulletins second chance. I have 3 unused licenses that I never sold with the rest I had so nothing is lost if it turns out that vbulletin isn’t really getting any better. If vbulletin 4 doesn’t work out I can convert to IPB down the road.

Even though I will be using it on a new site it doesn’t mean I will ever spend any more money on more licenses. That will never happen. If I buy any forum licenses for future projects you can be sure the money will be spent for IPB and not vbulletin.

Internet Brands. This is your second and final chance. You’ll never see any more of my money, but, you could get good PR from me, Lord knows you need it, if you keep me interested and keep vbulletin up the standards it used to follow.

One community, the one I resigned from takes this to the ridiculous. Not only can’t you link to any other admin community. You can’t mention the name of the admin forum and in most cases the admin forum name is replaced by “another forum”. There are also rules at this not to be named admin forum that disallows staff to have any sort of like community. If you do have a webmaster community you are prohibited from having a link directory that will include links to other admin forums or have any forum that is geared to forum admins. This was in the thread in which I resigned. This is ridiculous. There are other reasons I resigned and the no link policy as well as the owners short sightedness when it comes to bringing the forum into the present are the two that broke the camels back for me. This nameless admin community is still languished in 2003 and the owner is too short sighted to do anything about it. His reasons? He would lose his designer and programmer. Then why do you own a community if you can’t do these things yourself or at the very least can’t find someone familiar with the new improved software do them for you?

I for one am glad this admin community is not going to move into the new era. All the rest of the admin forums are in the same boat with the exception of one. They are all vbulletin centric with little to no discussions taking place about other software. They are basically all covering the same topics about the same software. This is also the main reason why these forums have these nonsense no compete rules. This puts off users of other software. Just take a look at Admin Addict, Admin Fusion and the nameless forum to name a few, I’ll let you figure out the URL to the nameless forum for yourself, and you’ll see much the same thing with a different wrapper.

The admin forum scene was so bad that I had considered starting one myself. Instead I kept my eye on a new one, Admin Extra. While they started out on vbulletin and had the same familiar faces signed up I got a sense that the owner knew where she wanted to take the site and knew outdated software wasn’t going to get it there. Admin Extra made the leap to 2010 in one fell swoop. In doing so Admin Extra is already starting to jump ahead of the other admin forums. Already you’re seeing people show up that use other software. Sure the same familiar vbulletin people are there, but, there is a nice flow of new faces bringing new perspective to the admin forum world.

While the forum to remain nameless and the rest of the admin community world languish in the past with outdated software and enforce archaic to the point of idiotic rules for staff Admin Extra has forged ahead and I predict that within the next year will be the defacto leader in the admin forum field leaving the nameless admin forum and the rest in the dust.

If I owned an admin forum I would be worried right about now. Your days are numbered. Admin Extra saw the future and grabbed a hold of it and as a result is heading to the top. All the others will be yesterdays news, if they aren’t already, in a short time.

When Windows Server 2008 is adopted by more people I will combine Admin Reports Forum into the new forum to make a one stop shop for all your Windows Server needs.

Be one of the first to register at the new Windows Server 2008 Forum.

While there are several reasons behind the sudden fall of a forum, I am going to discuss some of these issues in this two part article and tell you if your forum is destined to be a failure.

Starting the forum for wrong reasons…

That’s right; I have always come across forums which were started for reasons which are likely to cause the forum to fail inevitably. So before you invest your money and resource in starting a forum delve a little deeper for the reasons you want to start it and if it is one of the reasons I have listed below, then take a deep breath and do some soul searching before jumping the gun:

To get back at another forum: This seems to be one of the primary reasons why one sees new forums sprouting up almost every day. Most often than not rogue members of a particularly large or moderately successful forum might become unhappy/distressed with the forum administrator or their policy and decide to break away and start their own forum. Most often than not, forums like these don’t survive long and fail miserably.

Why?

They fail because of a simple reason, propagating negativeness and hate almost never leads to long term growth. Most often than not, these forums become the ranting point for members of the larger forum and people join not to discuss issues which they felt were being ignored by the other forum but to bitch about it. This state usually doesn’t last long and most members though still unhappy get bored with the alternative and go back to posting at the older forum.

If you are one of those who want to start a forum because you are unhappy with the current forum you’re participating in, then my suggestion would be not to try and become an alternative to the other forum by copying every thing from it, instead try and bring some uniqueness to your forum. Make sure you don’t try to steal members from other forums; instead try to grow on your own by writing articles and addressing issue you felt were being ignored by the older forums administration.

To make easy money: Many fail to realize how resource and time consuming running a forum can be. Many think on the basis of user generated content they will rank well in search engines and make some easy money. Well I got news for you; it is only some time before you realize what you got yourself into.

Forums are difficult to monetize and getting them to rank well in SERPs is tougher than getting a blog or normal site to rank. Even though in most successful forums an administrator usually doesn’t have to create majority of the content, in the initial phase (read 1-2 years) constant hand holding and content creation by the administrator himself is required on an almost daily basis along with promoting the forum through various channels.

Forums are also poor revenue generator unless you get a large number of people from search engines every day, since most of the regular visitors and member rarely if ever click on ads. Add to this, forums often need more resources to run than a simple blog or a website which adds to the overall expenditure.

Latest fad: Many these days start a forum because it is a latest fad and they feel being an administrator of a forum would be boastful for them. With out having knowledge of the niche they start a forum and after a couple of months of doing it for fun, they suddenly realize that it isn’t as fun as they first thought it would be. You will come across these people scouring through webmaster forums asking for ideas or niche they could target, well let’s face it, if you can’t even come up with the niche you need to target how do you expect to do well in it? It would be better if you stick to your job and try to become a contributing member in a forum you are interested in and maybe some day you will climb up to the ranks of moderator or even an administrator.

So what are some of the right reasons to start a forum?

• Start a forum because you are genuinely interested in the niche you plan to launch your forum.
• Start a forum because you have knowledge about a particular niche and are genuinely interested in learning more about it and at the same time helping those who know even less.
• Start a forum because you feel what you are looking for cannot be found any where else and it would be helpful to people like you.
• Start a forum not as a shortcut to the riches, but for a journey full of joy and experiences which will leave you enlightened and proud with the knowledge that you have accomplished far more than you could ever hope for.

About the author

This article was written by Yogesh Sarkar, who is the author of Content Pays.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Yogesh_Sarkar