I'm sorry if the post doesn't belong here. I don't know where else to place it.
A question for members who have a successful and active forum.
How did you get members? No really. What did you do for it, especially in the beginning?
I try to persevere, but over time the activity is worse than better.
At the same time, I feel that there is potential. I have a professional forum, intended not only for experts but also for the public.
But people prefer to discuss on Facebook. They prefer simplicity and speed, over the benefits of a forum.
Have you tried starting a discussion with fake profiles?
Are you writing a support blog with an emphasis on SEO?
Have you invested in advertising?
Technically, I think the site is relatively well-tuned.
I associate a professional facebook group (800 experts) and a public branch group (60,000 members). But they won't move from FB. At the same time, facebook does not allow what forum and discussions on facebook are very superficial.
Link to my forum - https://diskuse.bozpforum.cz/
I welcome any tip or advice.
Thank you for the discussion.
If we do only what we can to do, we would never do anything.
How did you get members? No really. What did you do for it, especially in the beginning?
My #1 source of traffic is from returning users, so that may not be relevant to you (yet 😉 ). But #2 is Google search results. So I would say that SEO is critical to success. Make sure you are setup with Google My Business and Google Search Console. Pay attention to alerts from Search Console and fix problems that arise. Setup an XML sitemap and report it to Search Console.
My #3 source of traffic is Facebook. I use the wpForo RSS feeds in dlvr.it to send all new topics (not replies) to my Facebook page, Twitter account, Google My Business and LinkedIn business page.
Thank you very much for all your information and advice.
I want to create a community like yours. Also for a narrowly and professionally specialized group of people. Currently, any community site is missing.
So far, I'm trying it in our small country - the Czech Republic. But Facebook predominates here and the forum is very passive (diskuse.bozpforum.cz).
But it should always be just a test and preparation for the launch of the global forum.
My biggest fear is from the beginning. I believe that once the first interesting content is created, it will get better and better. But the first members and the first content will be the biggest fight.
Just a few more questions about hosting your site. Because the speed of your forum is amazing and I'm watching it from Central Europe!
It's not entirely clear to me.
https://gridpane.com/pricing/ Gridpane not hosting? I.e. does gridpane only help distribute content over the internet and ease my server?
It's really amazing what you've accomplished and you're giving me hope that it's still possible to create a community site outside of social networks today!
If we do only what we can to do, we would never do anything.
GridPane is basically your software stack. It is highly optimized for security and speed. You choose the server(s) you want to host on and connect them to your GridPane account. Then you can manage your hosted websites from GridPane. It's the first thing I login to when I start working every morning.
https://gridpane.com/how-it-works/create-wordpress-vps-servers/
Once you've setup your server, you can then begin creating websites.
https://gridpane.com/how-it-works/create-wordpress-websites/
Note that I am not affiliated with GridPane, I'm just a really, really happy customer! But also keep in mind that it's not for the faint of heart -- you have to be willing to dig in deep and learn some technical stuff that's normally behind the scenes if you are used to something like Pressable or WP Engine. But I've learned a lot, too, and the staff is very helpful. I never thought I'd be using the CLI but here I am killin' it. 😀
CloudFlare handles my DNS and is also a CDN. And it's free. CloudFlare is what makes it possible for the site to be fast for people all over the world -- but of course the hosting needs to be able to serve it quickly to CloudFlare as well.
Thanks again for your kind words! 🙂
P.S. My family originally hails from Prague. I've never been there but it is my dream trip!
Thanks, great. I will try my solution and if it is not enough, I will try to duplicate yours or I will order a service from you :-))
One last question about cloudflare? Isn't there a problem with cloudflare cache and wpForo?
Prague is a beautiful historic city with good beer.
My dream is to see the USA 😀
If we do only what we can to do, we would never do anything.
One last question about cloudflare? Isn't there a problem with cloudflare cache and wpForo?
In CloudFlare, you can set page rules to disable their cache on forum pages. This way you still get the benefit of CloudFlare security and CDN while not interfering with wpForo's built-in caching.
