Heart Internet takes the strain off creating your own forum and allows its users to install phpBB 2 & 3 easily from its extensive library of scripts.
 
phpBB is a high-powered, fully scalable and customisable open-source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel and helpful FAQ.

Below are some Top Tips in helping you run your own forum and get your community off to a good start.

Start off Small
Many forums make the mistake of creating too many categories too soon. If you’re just starting out with your forum, you’re going to create a negative atmosphere if you have plenty of categories but with zero or very few posts. Plan out the minimum amount of categories your forum needs and use those for now. Once the community becomes more active with regular posts and contributing members, you can start to introduce more categories that will suit your target audience.

Make the Forum Appear Active
When you first start building your forum, it’s important to create a sense of activity, as it will be less likely that users will register to a forum which appears to lack enthusiasm and where there are no new topics being created. If you’re determined to make your forum a success then you should either get friends to sign up and post topics or create multiple accounts that you can login and post as, so inevitably you’re answering your own questions to begin with, but it makes the forum appear more active.

Creating & Running a Successful Forum
Every member that is newly registered to the forum should be sent a “Welcome to the Forum” message via the private message system. This is a really nice touch that new members will appreciate, it doesn’t have to be unique to every user, you could have a standard template that you can simply copy from and paste into a message.  It’s a good idea to include links in your welcome message to the most popular categories on the forum , encouraging new members to participate. Give them the opportunity to introduce themselves to the community, add a link within the message to the “Introductions” forum on your board and make sure you greet them with a reply.

Reply to Posts as Soon as Possible
Make the right impression by subscribing to all forums so you will be alerted of new threads and posts. Login and reply as soon as you can, if you are unsure how to answer the question, it may be worth searching the internet to see if it has been answered before and use that information to help, be sure to credit the original source.

Hire Moderators
Over time you will find it harder to monitor your forum as post rates and the amount of new registrations increase. It’s almost impossible for yourself to monitor the forum 24/7 for inappropriate content, such as spam and advertising.  It would be highly advisable to hire a moderator to help run your forum, approach the active members on your forum and ask if they would like to help improve and grow the community. Due to their commitments to the forum, it’s likely they will accept your request and be happy to help. It’s advisable to create a set of rules and instructions for moderators to follow so the forum is still run in exactly the way you want. Also, try to hire a moderator who is in a different time-zone so when you’re asleep, the forum is still being moderated.

Remove Spam
Nothing can turn visitors away more quickly from a forum than spam, so make sure you keep a watchful eye on members trying to sell unrelated products and remove posts that do not serve any purpose or that are offensive. It’s advised to create a forum for “General/Off Topic” posts so members can chat about other things which are not forum specific.

Send a Regular Newsletter
Send a regular newsletter to your forum members which includes the latest popular topics and encourages them to participate. It’s a great way of reminded members about your forum and also a way of generating traffic back to your boards.

Useful Links:

Support:
http://www.phpbb.com/support/

Modifications and Styles
http://www.phpbb.com/customise/

Heart internet offers an array of free tools in helping you getting traffic to your website. We also offer free Google Adwords vouchers on all our paid hosting accounts to give your website a good head start in bringing new visitors to your website.

It’s also worth trying the following methods to drive more traffic to your website.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges
Get more visitors to your website by offering free link exchanges with other relevant sites. By attracting more targeted visitors you are increasing your chances of creating a sale and converting them into customers. Reciprocal links will also increase your rankings within search engines as you are seen as a valued resource.

Join Forums & Discussion Groups
Promote your website on as many forums and discussion groups as you can.  Forums will normally give you the opportunity to create a signature, to which you can add a link to your website with a sentence of accompanying promotional text that should be enticing enough for users to click on.  Forums are also a fantastic resource of information where you will not only be able to promote your website but learn new skills along the way.  Take every opportunity you can to promote and talk about your website by joining in discussions and assisting other members.

Email Campaigns
Create a newsletter list that visitors to your website can easily sign-up to. Doing so will allow you to directly market to them via email giving you the opportunity to sell them a product or service and attract them back to your website.  Try to get your website listed on other websites newsletters by offering a commission to every product or service brought as a referral from it.

Submit Your Site to Key Directories
Submit your website to quality web directories such as Google’s Dmoz (www.dmoz.org) and Yahoo’s (http://dir.yahoo.com). You may not be successful the first time you submit but be patient as it can take up to several months for your website to appear. It’s advised you submit your website to more localised directories that are relevant to your business sector. This should yield better targeted visitors as opposed to directories that are more generic and cater for all types of businesses, it can also be detrimental to your business being listed in too many low quality directories.

Paid Advertising (AdWords)
If you have the funds to pay for advertising then you could try Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com).  AdWords allows you to target specific search terms in Google where you bid for higher positions on the sponsored panel on the right side of the results page. This method is great for attracting visitors quickly but be sure to set a daily budget as it can become expensive. There are many other paid advertising networks out there, it’s worth experimenting and finding out which service works best for you.

So you want to achieve a higher rank in search engines?

Below I have written my Top 5 tips in helping you to achieve a higher position within search engine rankings. The best way to start is by choosing one or two keywords that you would like to see your website achieve higher rankings with, e.g. “Web Design” and “Web Design Essex” it’s important that these words are relevant to the content of your site. I’ll be using the terms “Web Design” & “Essex Web Design” as examples in this guide, please substitute them for own chosen keywords when applying these methods.

1. Optimise your Title tags

The <title> tag of your website is the best place to include your chosen keywords. Search engines such as Google will determine a websites relevance based on the words and phrases used within it. It’s important to know that when writing your own <title> tag that you do not repeat your keywords too often, as you could been seen as over-using the term or spamming which may result in your website being penalised. A good rule to go by is to use between 10 – 15 words or 63 characters in your title tag and place the most relevant keywords at the beginning. I’m using the term “Essex Web Design” in the example below to show you that the title starts with the targeted keywords. Naturally repeating your keywords is fine, just be sure not to constantly repeat a phrase; a good example of how to structure your title is below:

<title>Essex Web Design – [company name here] are the top leading Web Design company in Essex </title>

2. Search Engine Friendly URLs (SEFURL)

Search engines will take into account the relevancy of your website to the search term based on the naming of files and folders.

For example:
A website that is un-optimised would have the following structure:

www.[yourwebsite].com/aboutus/index.html

You will see there are no relevant keywords used, so this website is going to have a hard time getting their website to rank higher than a website which is optimised. A good example of how you should name your files and folders to help increase your sites relevancy is:

www.[yourwebsite].com/web-design/essex-web-design.html

3. Regularly updated content

Search engines prefer websites that have relevant and regularly updated content on their pages. You can achieve fresh content yourself easily by either maintaining a blog or by writing small news articles. These don’t have to be hundreds of words, a paragraph would be sufficient, just remember to include relevant keywords and phrases within them.

Note that:
Unique, quality and consistency are the key things to remember when writing content for your website.

4. Relevant Back Links

Having links from other websites to your own will be beneficial to your ranking, especially if the websites are relevant. It’s important to get as many links as you can, what you will find is that if you have something worthwhile to offer, e.g. write interesting content (see tip 3), providing a fantastic service or offering unbeatable value, etc. then people will link to your website naturally over time. It’s worthwhile mentioning that having relevant related keywords in your backlink like “Essex Web Design” will be more beneficial in ranking higher within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) than having a term like “click here”.

5. Heading Tags

Make sure all your headings/titles within your website are encased using h1 tags. Inserting targeted keywords within your heading tags such as h1, h2, h3, etc. will specify what the page is going to be about and make your page more relevant to the subject.

An example would be:
<h1>Essex Web Design Services</h1>
<p>Text about your company here….</p>