KandyX – Ouch! Losing your entire forum is awful (I speak from experience). I can’t believe I missed your comment, and I am now replying 2 months afterwards! I just took a look at your site and love the steps you have on the homepage for new visitors. As soon as I visit your site now, I know exactly what it is about. Well done.

Smiley – Ah, but we can only hold out for so long!

Dave – I agree that it is important to be aware that not all traffic arrives at your homepage first. Therefore, you need to ensure that regardless of the page a visitor arrives at, the purpose of your site is clear. The more you know about your traffic and visitor behaviour, the better.

Mark – Well those sites are lucky you stuck around and tried to figure out what they were about; most won’t do that. You need some amount of text to convey the purpose of your site, but yes – you don’t want to overload visitors with huge amounts of it!

If you get lots of traffic from search engines then it’s likely they’re coming to your home page first and you need to make sure your meta stuff is in order. If they’re coming from referrals from other sites you need to know what page the link points at and in what context the link appears. These things help you get into the mind of your average vistior and therefore helps you know what you need to give them.

No messing around with databases or lost data.

The front page is mainly a portal I believe, or an ordinary HTM page that’s forwarded server-side.

Anyone got a tutorial for adding some introduction to the forum home page as in the soap forum example?

Also I installed a purple theme on the forum and ended up getting locked out of my own forum (a bug in phpbb3 of some kind) now I am afraid of changing my theme to a purple one or any one other than the blue default theme and this sucks. Anyone know how I can safely change the theme?

Any help would be most welcome.

Cheers
KandyX

Thanks for the wonderful read.

As you mention, when it comes to welcome messages, being brief and concise is key. Remember – web users are lazy. You want to convey the basic point of your community within a couple of seconds. The visitor is then able to decide whether your forum is something that is worth closer investigation.

Looking at your forum, I would recommend you just add a few words at the beginning of your welcome message detailing the purpose/subject/aim of your forum prior to the link to the ‘about’ thread. For example ‘We are a community of friendly individuals who come together to chat about whatever is on our minds’ – then the visitor can decide whether to proceed onto your ‘about’ thread.

http://www.theinfinityprogram.com

When I was using the phpBB software for my community, I had to custom code a welcome message at the top of the index. At first, it was short and simple, but too simple. It welcomed, it said what the subject of the forum is, and encouraged you to join (citing the benefits of registration). What it lacked was obvious, and I know it, but didn’t know exactly what to add due to the fact that my forum doesn’t have a focus. What it lacked was points of registration.

My first concern was as to what to list. I decided to include the philosophy of the administration, and the “culture” of the forum (including its being a none-Net Nanny forum, and striving for a contributive posting atmosphere), but I prefaced these points by being upfront that I agree that there’s nothing special about the forum, and that these are just points I felt worthy of note, in case someone would be interested, regardless.

After seeking advice at a forum administration community, I received the advice that would lead to another alteration to my welcome message: because of the points of registration, it was too long, and therefore looked unprofessional.

For that reason, and finding myself agreeing, I sought a way to remedy this, and yet to keep the import of the points of registration. My solution: to start a new thread with information about the forum most notable to first-time visitors (including what makes the forum unique, or points of registration), and to encourage the first-time visitors, on the welcome message, to view this page, and why.

With vBulletin, a welcome message comes standard, and I simply edited it to include the work I’ve already done on phpBB. I think I can do even more to help it stick out, like adding a relevant graphic, like on the screen shot shown, with the big graphic “Welcome”.

Now I understand a niche would be of benefit to my forum, and that has never been out of the question. I have simply not put too much into it, because I run my forum purely as a part-time hobby, and the focus comes as a secondary concern. Certainly not the best attitude to take if you seek great advancement, but even so, you can accomplish much if you apply yourself, and I think my community stats show that I have.

A customized welcome message alone may not seem like much, but every aesthetic customization, customizing your forum names, applying that welcome message, and anything else you may do, together helps keep the attention of the guest, and increase the chance that you’ll convince him to take the time to look around more, and maybe register.