Create and Grow Your own Forum Using MyBB

Decentwriter Level 1

April 4, 2018, 10:32 pm

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Many people like to create a unique website or even a blog which they work hard at on a regular basis. We all if not most of us know the ins and outs of creating the blog and filling it with content and then trying to attract the right set of visitors to our blogs. But what about forums?

There are 1000s if not more online these days in different niches and most are very popular and high demanding at the best of times will millions of members. But how can you create a forum and a successful one at that?

MyBB what is it and Why Use MyBB

Mybb is a forum discussion boards software, allowing members to install on there hosting accounts there own Forum. But why use MyBB when there are many forum software out there. The first thing is that Mybb is easy to use and the second thing is that it is free to use always. Yeah, true some others are free as well and some of you may not agree with me when I say this is the best software because to me it is.

Not only is it easy to use and install but also easy to add mods and plugins and so much more on creating the perfect forum for you. It is so easy to change layouts and with the extras with great plugins which will help your forum stand out little better with points systems to lottery's and so much more from the Google plugin which helps turn your permalinks into much more SEO friendly links. Mybb as a lot going for them I have used many before and I always go back to Mybb as in my eyes it is one of the best. Apart from a great community of members who are willing to help you when you have a coding problem to any error. There is always help at hand and very helpful they are as well.

Getting Started

Once you install your MyBB forum on your hosting Cpanel, the next thing I usually do is sort out meta descriptions and keywords. Do this by logging into your forum /admin panel, and then go to templates & style. Then down the left side of your panel click templates, then click options next to the theme you are using then expand template. Once you have done this it will bring up a list of template settings, look for Index page templates click to expand and then the top, click edit on Index.

When you enter edit mode you will see similar like you see below:

<html>
<head>
<title>{$mybb->settings['bbname']}</title>
{$headerinclude}

If you want to add manually your meta tags then delete all the above and copy this below:

<html>
<head>
<title>{$mybb->settings['bbname']}</title>
<meta name="Keywords"content="KEYWORDS GO HERE SEPARATE WITH COMMA,">
<meta name="Description"META DESCRIPTION GOES HERE">
{$headerinclude}

All done, great job... So now you have done your descriptions and keywords, also don't forget once this is done it is time to create your forum. But, also make sure you save your settings you just made to the changes of the template. Once you have done then click forums & posts. When the page loads then click, add new forum or edit the demo one to which it starts you off with. Make sure you separate some forums with certain categories if you want an idea what to use. Then google search your niche and type forums as well next to it. Check others forums but do not copy this is meant to be helping you give ideas how you can set yours up I do not suggest copying everything...

The first plugin you should install is the Plugin uploader which is ideal, so you don't have to keep logging into your Cpanel to add plugins. So make sure you download the MyBB plugin uploader follow the instructions with it and place it in the plugins folder in your domain on Cpanel. Once you have done now you can add other plugins through your MyBB administration panel. Go to plugins in the configuration menu and then browse plugins, there is a lot of plugins you can look through the first one you should install after the plugin uploader is plugin library and then Google SEO plugin. Then after them, any plugins you like. Once it is all done now it is time you started creating threads and posts in your forum. Try to create a rules thread and introduction maybe also news and updates.

Time to Boost Your Forum with members and Content

So now you NEED members, but how to get your forum popular with it being new and not promoted much. Well, now it is time to use Postloop, which is an excellent website which allows members to contribute to blogs and forums and earn points. They can exchange points for cash or use there points to get members to join there blogs or forums and get contributions from members just like you have been doing.

So join postloop totally free, add your new forum and follow the instructions on how to add your forum. Once all them steps are complete you can either add funds by buying points or earn points by writing content for blogs or forum posting. Once you have points you will notice members joining your forum and creating posts.

Pretty soon enough your forum will eventually be found either google or elsewhere to which also do try promote and share with social media websites and get the traffic. Also, add you domain.com to Google Webmaster tools as this will help with the indexing so you should more or less do this as soon as you finished setting up your forum. Remember to add meta description and try have a catchy name also a unique domain try fewer words as possible.

Good Luck

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SiamSEO

About mods and such; it's good to remember that they can easily break your site and cause security issues, so you shouldn't go around just installing everything on a whim. While it's likely that you are not able to assess the validity of them yourself, you can ask for help from the community and try to make sure that there's nothing shady going on. Not a surefire way obviously, so remember to keep multiple backups just in case!

9 years ago