This is the tenth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a new online community from scratch. I am currently developing a new online community and am detailing its development on this blog.

Community building: The real challenge

Many community builders will tell you that getting visitors to register and become members is the easy part. The biggest challenge comes in trying to get those members active and addicted. I agree.

Registering is should be easy. It’s a great first step – that new member is effectively a ‘lead’. However, it takes effort to convert that lead into an active contributor. In this article, I’ll outline the methods I am using at Female Forum to get as many members as possible active in the community, and how I’m keeping them active.

Keep the community visible

Don’t hide your community. Keep it as open as possible. People won’t take that first step and join if they don’t know what they are joining. You might like to hide one or two sections of your community, but be sure to keep the majority of it open and accessible. This content is your bait. Would you rather go fishing with a big juicy worm, or a bare hook?

Make registration links prominent

Don’t go overboard, but don’t hide your registration form. On Female Forum, there is a ‘Register’ link in the header of the page, along with a welcome prompt for unregistered members at the top of the forum pages. I also show the ‘New Topic’ and ‘Post Reply’ buttons to members that aren’t yet members – if a visitor clicks the button, they are then prompted to register. This results in all visitors who want to contribute being taken directly to the registration page.

Make registration easy

Some community builders argue that you should try to collect as much information as possible from users when they register. The argument goes that although less people will register, those that do will be more valuable. I am not convinced. Sure, quality is always more important than quantity but I would rather convert a visitor into a member before requesting more information from them. You haven’t build a relationship with that person yet, so how can you expect them to share their life story with you?

My registration page asks for a username, password and email address. That’s it. They can fill out their profile once they have registered and become more comfortable with the community.

Keep an eye on the activation process

Sometimes, people won’t respond to the activation emails or they won’t even receive them. Here is where you need to be proactive. Keep an eye on your pending members – try to work out why they haven’t activated their accounts. You’ll be surprised how many people make mistakes when entering their email address. Of course, you need to be careful trying to double-guess what people are entering, but if you see john@homail.couk, you can be pretty sure they meant to enter john@hotmail.co.uk. Update it, and resend the activation email.

If members haven’t activated their account after a week and their email address looks OK, it can’t harm resending the activation email. Just don’t be resending them every day.

Invite new members to get involved

Don’t bombard new members with messages. You don’t want to appear desperate. Give them a day or two after they have activated their account before contacting them with a personal welcome message. This is not the time for automation.

Introduce yourself – outline your role, and invite them to introduce themselves. Include a direct link to the introductions form. Make things easy.

Has this member filled out their profile? Do you know anything about them? Identify with their interests. Here’s a recent example from Female Forum. A member joined, and in her profile she mentioned that she was from Canada. I mentioned that I had lived and worked there for a year in 2004/5 and asked her where in Canada she lives.

I found something I had in common with this new member, and asked them a question to encourage interaction. It doesn’t matter that this conversation is private for the time being – you are developing a relationship with this member, and building trust. When they feel comfortable, they’ll interact with the public community.

Engage at every opportunity

When a member introduces themselves, develop a conversation. Pick up on any interests they mention. Give them links to discussions you feel will be of interest to them. Mention the names of other members that they have things in common with. Be a matchmaker.

Delegate community building tasks

Bring in valued members to help you build the community. Female Forum isn’t large enough to warrant bringing in moderators just yet. Indeed, the community is barely 5 months old – I don’t yet know the members well enough to decide who I want to invite as moderators. However, I do want the most valuable members to feel extra special. I don’t want to lose them. I want them to feel even more engaged with the community. So, I created a ‘Community Rep’ position. I now have community reps that are responsible for different areas of the community. Some are responsible for welcoming new members, others for creating new content, others for encouraging debate by responding to existing content, and others whose sole job is to encourage inactive members to get involved.

The community reps have clear guidelines – they know what is and what is not expected or permitted. They know not to spam members. They know what tactics work, because I have told them and led by example. I have a small core of cheerleaders that are really helping me build the Female Forum community, and what’s more – they love doing it.

Earn and retain trust

I am truly humbled when I see what some members are willing to discuss with the community. They trust other members, and by implication this means they trust the community’s management. Don’t lose this trust. Ensure you have strong, clear community guidelines that you enforce professionally and impartially. It’s hard to earn trust, but very easy to lose.

Get involved. Be contactable and approachable

You need to get involved in the community. Why should you expect members to get involved if you can’t be bothered to do so yourself? You need to be visible. Don’t be anonymous – be sure to share information about yourself.

I am in a rather unique position at Female Forum – it’s an online community for women, yet I am male. Therefore, I deliberately limit the number of posts I make in the public discussion forums. I develop the community primarily through the private messaging system, general chat and introductions areas. I ensure that members feel comfortable with my presence and I don’t get too involved in conversations that may be sensitive or overly personal in nature.

The subject matter of your community and your aims and goals should determine how involved you are in your community. Regardless of how involved you are, you should always be approachable and contactable. Female Forum has clear, prominent links to a contact form. My signature tells members how they can contact me. When I welcome new members, I tell them to contact me with any questions, comments or suggestions. I invite feedback and contact from my members. You should do the same.

Be aware and follow up. Show concern.

Haven’t seen a member online for a while? Drop them a message to make sure everything is OK. Again, be sensible. Don’t bombard them with messages or spam them. Send a personal message once a member hasn’t been seen for a couple of weeks. Keep it short and simple. Show your concern. Ask them if they are OK. Whenever I have done this, members tell me how valued it made them feel – no other online community they were a member of had sent them a message asking after them if they disappeared for a few weeks. Just don’t overdo it.

Did a member recently move house?  Maybe they recently sat an exam or had a job interview? Ask them how it went. You don’t have to keep this private – post it in the open forum (as long as the information is common knowledge). This way even more members will chip in and make that member feel extra special.

Create a ‘dummies’ guide

No matter how easy you think your community is to use, some people will still be confused. You need to cater to these people. Ensure you have guides on how to use the community and make them easy to find! Have a section for frequently asked questions. Even better, create videos so people can see how to use the community. I am working on instructional videos for Female Forum, and hope to have them posted by the end of the month.

Don’t be afraid. Be sensible and be personal

There is nothing wrong with contacting members of your online community as long as each message you send is justified and personal. Don’t send inactive members an email every day. Don’t send members you haven’t seen for a couple of weeks a private message every single week until you hear back from them. Be sensible.

People joined your community to interact with others. You are simply interacting with that member. Just don’t flog a dead horse. You won’t be able to get every single member of your community actively involved every single day. Accept this, and cut them some slack. Your community should be fun – members don’t want to be bombarded with messages from one person (you). Make a limit and stick to it. No response from a member after two messages? Leave them be, and hope for the best.

So that’s what I am doing to get members active and addictaed. What are you doing?

This is the ninth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a new online community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Promoting an online community

Female Forum launched on 4 September 2008. Since then, the site has had a total of:

• 13,258 visits
• 60,060 pageviews
• 194 forum members
• 3,048 forum posts

You shouldn’t judge your success based on figures like those I have shared above. Your online community should be unique – therefore you can’t compare your stats to others as a determinant of your success. If you are meeting your own goals, then you are enjoying success.

In this article, I will tell you the promotion methods I have employed to reach the milestones stated above.

1. Leverage existing traffic

I added links to Female Forum on my existing websites, however I didn’t go ‘all out’ and blanket my current sites with links and banners. You want to start your external promotion efforts slowly – you want to build traffic and increase it day after day. You don’t want to open the floodgates on a new community that has minimal content. By promoting your community slowly, you will also allow yourself time to fix any bugs or errors that crop up.

2. Ensure pages are search engine friendly

Firstly, let me state that I am not an expert when it comes to search engine optimisation – I simply put strategies into practice that I have picked up in my experience with developing websites. All pages on your website should have relevant titles that include the keywords relevant to the content on that page. There is debate over whether META tags (keywords and descriptions) are still relevant. I say they can’t hurt, and always work to include them. I also ensured that all images had relevant ‘ALT’ tags.

3. Drop your link whenever possible

Every day I try to add at least one external link to Female Forum. Not only do links help bring in more direct traffic, they can benefit your existing search engine rankings. I get royalty free images for this blog and Female Forum from sxc.hu. On each image page there is a box for comments. Users who upload their photos love to know where they are being used – so every time I use an image, I thank them and include a link to where their image is appearing. Not only is this appreciated by the owner of the image, I also get myself an additional easy backlink.

Make sure you do not spam other sites. Joining forums or sites just so you can drop your link is never a good idea. Some forums allow links in signatures, others don’t. If in doubt, always ask first. You don’t want people to spam your online community, so don’t spam those that belong to others.

ExpressionEngine is the software behind Female Forum. They have a forum category where you can announce your EE based website. I made a post there, and also submitted the site to the EE Showcase (it was accepted and sent some good traffic).

I also use Article Marketer to build links to Female Forum. Every now and then I will rewrite an article and post it to Article Marketer, with links to the site in the author bio box. Typically this will then be distributed and earn a good number of additional links to your site. Thanks to the help of Article Marketer, Female Forum currently has 2,613 external links pointing to the site (according to Google Webmaster Tools). When it comes to Yahoo!, there are 3,414 inlinks.

4. Paid Advertising

I rarely undertake paid advertising, so this area was pretty new to me. Before I began advertising, I ensured I set up a ‘Goal’ in Google Analytics. The goal I set was for visitors to reach the forum registration page – this would allow me to determine what advertising was the most effective (ie which sites sent traffic that converted into members). Ideally, I would have placed the goal page on the ‘Registration Success’ page, but EE doesn’t have a standalone page of this nature.

I advertised Female Forum using the following sites:

AdBrite – What attracted me to AdBrite was the fact I could target specific websites and niches, however I found the traffic converted pretty poorly. Female Forum appeared as an interstitial and consequently few people clicked around – they just skipped it and continued on the site they were visiting. It was definitely the cheapest option I tried, though.

Google AdWords – I haven’t fully explored Google AdWords with Female Forum yet, however I did try placing a few video ads (click here to see a low-quality example). I found the videos had a disappointing play rate, however I still need to play around and find a more enticing ‘teaser image’ that appears before a viewer clicks the play button and then move onto text ads.

StumbleUpon Ads – Advertising on StumbleUpon can be a good way of getting a new site ‘out there’ and generating some awareness. I can target those interested specifically in ‘Womens Issues’, and each click is a real visitor to the site. What’s more, you can see how well your site is perceived by the StumbleUpon community. On my last check, Female Forum achieved an 81% approval rating.

Facebook Ads – This is without doubt my favourite advertising method so far. The amount of control you have when it comes to targeting your traffic is fantastic. If you play around with your titles and advertising copy, you can come up with a highly effective ad. Without doubt, Facebook Ads is the most cost-effective method I have tried and brings me the best converting traffic.

5. Networking

Find blogs that are relevant to your niche and get involved. Don’t comment just to add your link; rather, add informative and well thought-out comments. After you have done this a few times, contact the blogger and introduce yourself. Establish a dialogue with them and ask them what they think of your new site. Ask them if they would be interested in interviewing you. Ask them if they would be interested in you writing a guest blog post.

Join Twitter and get involved. My Twitter page can be found at: http://twitter.com/martinreed. Do some searching and find other Twitterers who are involved in the same niche as your online community. Follow them. My involvement in Twitter started off as an experiement so I could see what it was all about. It has given me great additional exposure and sent traffic to both my blog and Female Forum. Twitter was responsible for me getting an interview at BabeofBusiness.

Interviews on blogs are far more effective than paid reviews. To find blogs that interview readers, do a blog search on Google. Run something like following query: <subject or niche> <interview> inurl:blog

For example, let’s say your new online community is about Coi Carp. You want to find blogs that interview people in the Coi Carp field. Your query would be something like: coi carp interview inrul:blog

Play around with some search strings and you will soon find relevant blogs that conduct interviews. Get involved in the blogs by adding constructive comments, and after a while reach out by contacting the blogger and requesting an interview. Even if you don’t generate much additional direct traffic, you are getting additional links to your site and are establishing your credentials as an authority in your niche.

I have also started promoting the site within social networks – I recently put up a Facebook page for Female Forum and will soon be running a competition to encourage members to become ‘fans’. I will then build and strengthen the relationship the site has with new and potential members though the Facebook page.

Effective promotion and marketing begins at home

As I stated in my interview at Babeofbusiness, good marketing starts at home. Inbound links, visitor numbers and even Google PageRank mean nothing if your online community is not engaging, fun, and filled with high quality, unique content. Make your members feel welcome and valued. Get involved in the community yourself. Run some interesting competitions. Develop a personality for your community.

If you don’t have solid foundations, then external promotion is worthless. You need to have something that people want, so always focus on your community first and its promotion second.

Your thoughts

How do you promote your online community? Perhaps I have missed out a strategy you find effective – if so, share it! Do you disagree with some of the steps I have taken? Share your thoughts, experience and ideas by leaving a comment below.

Well the day has finally arrived. I started developing my latest online community way back in November of last year, and now approximately 9 months later the site is born. My new community is an online community for women.

There are still a few minor kinks that need to be ironed out; for example the fonts look great on a Mac but awful on a PC and there are a couple of tiny bugs that are getting fixed as I type this article, however it was time for the site to launch. When developing any website, you need to accept that it will never be perfect and it will never be ‘finished’. A website is a living entity – it should be continuously developing, maturing and improving. If you hold off the launch of your website until it is ‘perfect’, you will find that you never get it launched!

Why did I develop a community for women?

I am a strong advocate of only developing a community based around a subject you are passionate about. This helps keep you motivated and dedicated to making your site a success. I am not so much passionate about women’s issues as online communities in general. One day last year I was talking to my mother about iVillage – perhaps the most popular online community for women. She told me she went there once but couldn’t figure out how to use the site is it was so busy and complicated to use. This got me thinking…

After undertaking some research, I found that many women felt this way. Yes, iVillage is popular but it certainly doesn’t cater to the majority of women online. The site seems to struggle with the sheer amount of content it holds and does not present this content in a clear or accessible manner. As for the community aspect of the site, their message boards are hidden away and extremely long-winded and unintuitive.

After spending a couple of weeks looking for alternative websites in this niche, I didn’t come across any that I would consider as being ‘better’. This was when I decided to launch my own online community for women.

Why has the site taken 9 months to complete?

From the outset, I always knew this was going to be my biggest project to date. I invested a good amount of money in a memorable domain name, and knew that I wanted to have a huge amount of content alongside an integrated forum. I didn’t want to launch a forum by itself. I wanted something more comprehensive, something that would offer far more value than a standalone forum, and something that was unique.

It took me time to develop a logo, time to have a design made, time to choose the right software platform, and time to get the site coded and tested. It also took time to populate the site with content so it didn’t launch as a ghost town.

The benefits of working with great people

I have never paid for forum posts, and doubt I ever will. Paid forum posters will never have the enthusiasm for your community that you should have. They certainly won’t have the same motivation. Create content for your forum yourself – you will then have control over the initial tone and personality of your online community.

Having said that, I did outsource article writing for my new online community. Put simply, I don’t have the time to write 700-1,000 word articles. Furthermore, as my target audience is women I don’t really have the knowledge or experience to write quality, relevant articles. I looked for writers early on by advertising in the SitePoint Marketplace. This ensured that I would be building a good stockpile of content by the time the site launched.

I looked for writers in a similar way that I looked for a coder – I asked for samples, references and then sealed agreements with written contracts. Being thorough at this stage always pays dividends in the future – I now have fantastic, reliable, highly-networked writers who are not only helping me produce content, but are also helping me promote the site by posting articles on their blogs and mentioning the site to other female bloggers and highly targeted websites they are members of. My ExpressionEngine coder has worked with me on an almost daily basis for the past three months without complaint or delay.

If you choose the wrong people to work with, you will suffer the consequences at a later date.

What next?

Visitors that found my website prior to launch had the option of registering their email address to receive a notification when the site went live. Those people have now been emailed, and I am currently working on a promotional plan. I will be promoting the site on my existing communities, and networking with other bloggers who target my new community’s audience. This will just be the beginning – you cannot rely on one form of promotion to make your online community a success.

As always, I will detail the development of my new community on this blog – so make sure you subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t done so already. If you don’t have a feed reader you can subscribe by email.

This is the ninth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a new online community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Final testing

With any reasonably large project, you will need to undertake a good amount of testing. My new online community includes a database of articles with an integrated forum. Basic functionality immediately after coding was fine, however there were a number of small tweaks that needed to be done after the initial coding – mainly relating to the layout and small changes to title sizes, colours, etc.

I am pleased to say that thanks to having a fantastic ExpressionEngine coder, all modifications were done with enthusiasm, professionalism and skill. I cannot stress how important it is that you work with people that hold these qualities – as I wrote about before, choosing a coder for an online community is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

I didn’t spend much time looking for someone to code the design of this blog, and certainly paid the price for it as the development time dragged on and on as they claimed to ‘not be getting my emails’ or claiming they had already sent me the required files. Furthermore, their coded version of my design didn’t include a number of the design elements. You have been warned!

Optimisation

Before launching the community, it is important that I optimise the site to make it search engine friendly. Regular readers will know that I always say people are more important than the search engines, however thinking about the search engines when dealing with your site’s code is always a good idea. The sooner your site is optimised for the search engines, the better. Therefore I am working to ensure all article pages have relevant page titles and include relevant keywords and meta tags. Images also have their own alt tags. By doing this, I am ensuring that the site is picked up speedily and effectively by the search engines as soon as it launches.

Content generation

As I mentioned before, it is a good idea to create content before you launch and this is what I am currently working on. I am adding articles so that as soon as the site launches, it has a good amount of content for both human visitors and the search engines. I will also be ensuring there is content in the forums – remember, people will not want to join a forum that has no members or content.

By adding content, I also get to test out the site – the more I use it, the more likely I am to catch any issues with the site prior to launch.

Promotion plan

By now I am coming up with a number of strategies for promoting my new online community. During the site’s development, I had a holding page up with information about the site and also invited people to register their email address. As a result, I now have 133 email addresses of people interested in the site. Therefore as soon as I launch, I can fire off an email to these users, inviting them to check out the site.

I will also leverage the traffic I get on my existing sites by emailing those who have given me their permission to do so, promoting the new community and sharing information about it. I will also add links to the new community on my existing websites.

Finally, I will check out blogs related to my community’s niche and contact the blog authors and introduce myself and my new website to them. I will make each email personal, and will ask them for their thoughts and feedback on my new site. By actively engaging blog authors, and asking them for their feedback I am developing a relationship with them. This benefits me as I can network with more people involved in my community’s niche, obtain suggestions and constructive criticism, and hopefully get my site mentioned on some popular and influential blogs.

So when is the launch?

I am hoping to launch the site by Monday at the latest – stay tuned as I will be announcing the launch right here and am looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

This is the eighth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a new online community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Choosing a coder

In my last article, I wrote about the processes I went through in choosing a CMS for an online community. I eventually settled on ExpressionEngine due to its templating system, its reputation for clean and efficient code, and the fact it comes with a forum module. So now I had a design and had picked a CMS – next on the list of things to do was to find someone to code the site.

Another benefit of using ExpressionEngine was the fact they offer a list of people that have proven themselves as competent EE developers by way of their Professionals Network; this certainly saved a lot of time as I had an easily accessible list of developers in one place rather than having to hit the search engines.

Whittling down the numbers

There are approximately 70 developers in the Professionals Network, so I needed to whittle these down – I really didn’t want to send out 70 separate emails requesting further information! I decided to only visit the websites of the companies that mentioned ‘Design Integration’ in their list of services. When I arrived at the company sites, I took a look around. I looked at their portfolio to see what type of work they had done in the past. If I liked what I saw, I took a look at the live versions and then took a sneak peek at the code. I also ran a few of the sites they had worked on through the W3 validator; clean, valid code was high on my list of priorities.

If I liked the look of the company site and their portfolio, I sent them an initial email as outlined below:

Hi

I am looking for a coder for a website project. I already have the designs and PSDs. Basically the website will offer articles alongside an integrated forum. I have chosen ExpressionEngine as the CMS platform to be used, and would like to know more about the services you are able to offer.

Are you able to take on such projects? What are your rates? Can you provide me with the URLs of some EE sites you have developed for clients?

If you would like further information I can send across a couple of images so you can get more of a feel for the project.

Regards

Martin

I deliberately kept the email short and to the point at this stage, as I was only really looking to further whittle down the number of companies I was going to shortlist. This way, those that weren’t able to take on any new work, or weren’t interested solely in coding could immediately be removed from consideration. Additionally, when I received replies I could further judge the company based on their tone, professionalism and speed of response.

Further shortlisting

If I liked what companies said when they replied, I showed them the site designs in order to receive a full quotation. When all quotations were received, I had five companies still in the running. There was one coder in particular who I had a good ‘feel’ about – he was extremely thorough in his emails to me, came across as highly professional and really seemed to understand the nature of the project. He wasn’t the cheapest, but after a little negotiation on the quote I felt the extra cost would be more than worth it.

Before definitely deciding to go with this person, I wanted references which he was more than happy to provide. The email I sent to his references was as follows:

Hi

I am contacting you as I am considering engaging (Name) from (Company) for an upcoming project of mine – he passed on your contact details as a reference.

If you have the time, please could you describe the experience you had with (Name)? What did (Company) produce for you? Were you happy with the results? Would you recommend them? What impressed you most about them? What disappointed you about them, or what were you less impressed with?

Any further information you may be willing to provide would also be extremely useful.

Thanks for your time.

–
Best regards
Martin

Every reference came back with glowing reports of quality work. After confirming the payment details (25% up front, 75% upon completion) and that he was willing to sign a transfer of rights form for the code upon completion, I hired him.

In conclusion, the steps I followed were:

1. Find companies that perform coding services for ExpressionEngine
2. Check out their sites and portfolio
3. Send speculative email
4. Request quotes and time frames from shortlisted companies
5. Request references from shortlisted companies
6. Check payment policy and confirm willing to sign over rights to code upon completion

Never forget to pay attention to your gut instinct. Very often, the person that ‘feels’ right for the job will be the person that is right for the job. Also, don’t consider quotations to be set in stone: always negotiate on price.

So far, things are going great with the coder that I selected and I will be more than happy to share his details on this blog when my new community is launched.

What’s next

When the coding is wrapped up, there will be a period of testing and final optimisation. When this has been done, I’ll need to choose a web host and launch the site. Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed to ensure you don’t miss out on the next update.

This is the seventh article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Choosing software for a new online community

Because there would effectively be two sections to my new community website (articles and a forum), I considered the following:

1) A WordPress/phpBB integration

I could have my design coded into a WordPress theme, and have a phpBB forum integrated into the WordPress software. Ultimately I decided against this as I was uncomfortable using two completely different pieces of software together. If I updated WordPress, would my phpBB integration still work, or vice-versa? This seemed a little too ‘patch it together, and hope for the best’ for my liking.

2) A vBulletin installation with CMS plugin

I have seen a number of sites using vBulletin with a CMS plugin, or a custom-coded design. After some research, I found that I just didn’t like the end-user experience of vBulletin when used as a CMS. Some vBulletin based sites with a custom solution (eg SitePoint) look great, and are closer to what I was after but the potential costs involved of custom coding (both up-front and ongoing) left me hesitant to pursue this option.

3) An integrated CMS solution

A Content Management Solution would allow me to publish articles and use an integrated forum by the same authors (ideally) as the CMS software. Keeping the whole site under one piece of software seemed like the best idea in terms of overall consistency and scalability, so I decided this was the way forward for my new site.

The CMS options

There are a wealth of CMS solutions out there. I investigated Joomla, Drupal and ExpressionEngine. Ultimately I chose ExpressionEngine, based on my own opinions as well as the thoughts of a couple of designers and coders experienced in using the three different systems.

I dismissed Joomla as it seemed to be a little too ‘patched together’ for my liking. There was a lot of bloated code, it didn’t appear to be overly intuitive in both it’s front-end and back-end, and it isn’t particularly compliant with current web standards.

Drupal seemed a lot more professional, stable and web standards compliant. Unfortunately it has a very steep learning curve for non-techies and customisations can be difficult to do. I wanted a CMS system that I could easily customise once the initial coding was done, and Drupal just looked a little too complicated for my needs. Additionally, I really didn’t like the forum system – as this is to be a focal area of my site I just couldn’t go with Drupal.

In the end, I chose ExpressionEngine – it looked easy to maintain, easy to customise and had a strong emphasis on adhering to Web standards. The template system employed by ExpressionEngine is something I would be far more comfortable using to keep the site up-to-date and looking just how I want. I also liked the integrated forum, its functionality, usability and design. Sure, you have to pay for ExpressionEngine whilst Joomla and Drupal are open source and free, but for the right type of software I was willing to cough up the cash.

Finding a coder

Now I have chosen the CMS solution to be used for my new community website, it is time to find a coder. Unfortunately the one I had lined up is now fully booked, so I will be looking through ExpressionEngine’s Professionals Network and contacting a number of coders requesting quotes and examples of sites they have coded/designed for ExpressionEngine in the past.

When choosing a designer or a coder, it is important that you fully research each one – don’t choose one based solely on price. You need to work with someone that understands your vision, is professional, trustworthy and capable. Ask for references and ask for evidence of their work. Find out how long they estimate it will take to complete your project. Contact people they have worked for and ask them whether they were happy with the work produced. Don’t make the potentially costly mistake of choosing a designer or coder on a whim, and always sign a transfer of rights agreement when the work is done.

What’s next

I am hoping that in my next update I will be able to describe the coding process, and perhaps even show you a sneak preview of the new community prior to its launch. I was initially aiming to launch the site at the beginning of April, however this will probably be moved back to around May/June now.

Your thoughts

Do you use a CMS solution for your online community? Which one do you use? Why did you choose it? If you don’t use a CMS, why not? Did you consider one before starting your website? Share your thoughts and opinions by leaving a comment below.

This is the sixth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

My new community: Current status

It’s been a couple of months since my last update so I thought I would firstly fill you in with what I have been doing.

The logo was completed in January, and the design process for the website itself began in February. It has been quite a lengthy process, mainly due to the fact I regularly strive for perfection. When my designer emails across concepts, I can always spot minor errors such as an image being out of position by a pixel or two. Similarly, I will not accept a design until I think it is perfect.

Fortunately, I found a patient and professional designer – after providing a full brief they worked up an absolutely cracking design, based on my core needs:

1) An attractive, original design
2) A design that is intuitive and easy to use
3) A design with a strong community focus and call to action

It is no good designing a community website and then hiding away the community aspect. It sounds obvious, but I find many websites have their forums hidden away and the developer wonders why there is hardly any activity. It was imperative that my homepage made the visitor immediately understand that although the site publishes its own content by way of articles, there is still a strong community focus.

Initially, I was only going to have the designer draw up the homepage, then I would modify the design for the content pages myself. However, the quality of their work led me to commission them again for the additional pages. These are almost complete, then I will be onto the task of coding the website.

Understand your site’s concept before thinking about coding

First, let me make it clear that I am terrible at coding. Basic HTML with tables, I can do – anything else then I am lost. Therefore, I consider myself to be unskilled when it comes to coding websites. Before I find a coder, I need to understand how I want my new community to work – sure, I can give a coder the PSDs of the site design, but I still need to be sure exactly how I want the site to function in a live environment.

What’s next

Next week I explain the process I went through to choose the software that my new online community would run on. I looked at a blog/forum integration as well as a number of Content Management System (CMS) solutions.

Your thoughts

Are you finding these articles useful? Am I missing out on details that you would like to know more about? Share your opinions by leaving a comment below.

This is the fifth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Logo being finalised

In my last article I wrote about the logo design process. I am happy to say that the logo for my new online community is currently going through a final minor revision before it will be ready – therefore I can now move onto the design process for the site itself.

Starting the community design process

Designing a website is a process – you cannot simply knock something up from the top of your head and publish it. If you do, you are highly unlikely to have the site you want, and it is unlikely that your site will please your visitors. In this article, I will outline the steps I am taking in order to get my new community website designed.

Step One – Determine what your site is about

This may sound obvious, but it is important that you decide exactly what your site will be about. Simply knowing the subject of your site is not enough. You need to decide who your target audience will be, what needs they have and how your site will satisfy these needs.

You also need to decide what functions your site will have. Will you offer a forum and nothing else? Will you offer articles and a forum? How will you integrate such features into your website?

Step Two – Determine your site’s purpose and goals

Why are you setting up your website? What will make it different from other websites out there? What do you hope to achieve with your website? You will not be able to design a suitable website without knowing the answers to these questions. If your priority is to attract forum traffic and interaction, then your forum needs to be a focus of your site’s design. If your priority is to build a strong member database, your design needs to focus on encouraging visitor conversion and registration.

Step Three – Understand and learn about your target audience

Who is your audience? What are their likes and dislikes? Are they Internet savvy? Do they love flashy, intricate site designs? Do they need help and reassurance? Do they like lengthy, in-depth articles or basic articles that will inspire them? You will not be able to design a site appropriate for your audience unless you understand your audience.

Step Four – Draw up a design brief

Even if you are a talented designer, it will help if you write down all your ideas and goals to ensure you don’t lose focus – it can be easy to get carried away during the design process and end up with something that is completely different to your actual aims! A little improvisation can be great, but if you deviate from your brief too much, you should reconsider whether your design is really catering to your audience, or solely to your own tastes!

Your design brief is even more important if you are outsourcing the design work. A designer will struggle to design the right site for you unless they understand exactly what you (and your target audience) want. Draw up a written brief for your designer and include as much information as possible – don’t be afraid of making it too long; a good designer will always be grateful to receive as much information as possible.

Step Five – Begin the design process

By now you should have a clear understanding of what you want your site to be and the goals you want it to achieve. You should know who your audience is, what they want and be able to cater to their needs and your own goals through your site’s design. Don’t be afraid to experiment – sometimes experimentation can yield great results; just be sure you stay true to your overall design brief.

The next article in this series of building a new online community will detail the process of design revisions and coding.

This is the fourth article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

An important step that I need to take in order to build a successful new online community is to have a strong, brandable logo. As I have written before in an article entitled ‘Ensure your community has a brand’, it is important that your website is easily recognisable and memorable – one way of doing this is by having a good logo.

The benefits of a strong logo

A logo is what sets your site apart from the competition. A logo should communicate your brand’s message – it should tell people what your site is about. A logo should be easy to remember and use symbols. Symbols are easier to remember than words, so make sure your logo incorporates them if you want it to be remembered.

A strong logo also reminds someone that they have previously visited your site. Someone may visit your site only to forget about it. If they drop by again, they may give your site a closer look if they remember it from a previous visit. One way people remember a website is through a strong design and a strong logo.

Designing a logo

I have absolutely no design ability whatsoever! Therefore, I once again turned to SitePoint to find a logo for my new online community. By starting a logo design competition in the SitePoint Contests section, I was able to present a brief to a huge number of designers who would then offer me concepts which I could evaluate.

At this stage, I do not have an overall site design in mind – therefore I was able to give the designers a great deal of artistic freedom when it came to the logo. It is still important however, to give the designers as much information as possible. I therefore told them about the site – its aims, its purposes and how it will work. I told them that the logo should convey the site’s purpose and message. I also said that I wanted the logo to appear friendly, approachable and professional and that it should be feminine, but not ridiculously so – I am aiming the site at an adult audience, and want the design to reflect this.

The benefits of using the SitePoint Contests section are huge – I can set my own budget (the prize money) and see ideas and entries from a large number of different designers. If I approached a single design firm, I would have such a wide variety of concepts to choose from.

By the end of the ten day contest, I had over 150 entries to choose from. Of these, about eight or nine ended up being serious contenders. I am still deciding on the winning entry, and have asked the opinions of some individuals that my new site will be targeting, but I can say now that the winning logo will have the following qualities:

1 – Include symbols or some form of basic imagery
2 – Be simple and easily memorable
3 – Convey the attributes of the new website

Once I have decided upon the winner, I will then ensure that both myself and the designer sign a transfer of rights agreement. When this has been done, I will transfer the money and receive the files.

By next week I will have a fantastic new logo for my online community – then I just need to sort out the design for the rest of the site. It is important that your logo ‘fits’ with the rest of your site design. For this reason, I always look to design a site around the logo and not the other way around. The logo should contain the most important messages you wish to convey about your site and its brand. Therefore, it makes sense to extend the rest of your site design from the logo rather than have a logo designed as an after-thought.

Your thoughts

Does your website have a strong logo? How did you go about designing it? Did you design it yourself or get someone else to do it for you? What planning stages did you go through? Did you design your logo before or after the rest of your site? Share your thoughts and experiences by leaving a comment below.

This is the third article in what I hope will be an indefinite series about the processes involved in developing a brand new community from scratch. I am currently developing a brand new online community and will detail its development on this blog. As I have said before, I think it is far easier to learn by example rather than simply reading another person’s theories and ideas.

Your community needs content

You can’t have a community without members. You can’t have a community without interaction. You can’t have a community without content. Therefore, when your site launches you need to ensure you have a good amount of fresh, unique, quality content to encourage people to become members and interact on your site.

It’s always a good idea to have great content on your site from day one so that you are well and truly up and running from the day you launch. I want to ensure that the community I am currently developing has a good amount of quality content right from the start. My community will not solely be a forum – it will also offer articles as a means of adding depth and value to the site as well as attention from the search engines.

DIY or outsource?

I don’t have a great amount of knowledge about the subject my new community will be based around. Sure, I could still write some good articles but right now I just do not have the time to invest in creating content to the high standard I want. Therefore, I have decided to outsource the article writing.

If you have the time and dedication needed to create all your own content, then go right ahead and get creating. Unfortunately I don’t have the time for this right now – I already have a number of other things to concentrate on such as creating a logo and working on site design and functions. Because I want the site full of content right from the launch, I want to get writers on board who can be hard at work creating articles whilst I concentrate on these other areas.

How to outsource your content writing

I am determined to only have unique, quality articles on my new community website. As a result, I was unwilling to order any ‘packages’ from content syndicators who merely sell the same articles over and over again. Similarly, I don’t want articles that are full of spelling or grammatical errors. I want this new community to be one of quality, and if this isn’t reflected in the site’s content, I will not achieve such a reputation.

It is extremely hard to build a respectable reputation, but extremely easy to lose one. I will only ever publish high quality content on my new site, and therefore need to find the best writers possible to create the content. These are the steps I am taking:

1 – Determine what I want my writers to actually do

This sounds obvious, but it is extremely easy not to have a clear plan for your writers. If you want to get the best work from them, you need to tell them exactly what you want. What subjects do you want your writers to write about? How many words do you want each article to contain? How many articles do you want to be written each week/month?

2 – Advertise for writers

I placed an advert in the SitePoint Marketplace for writers, with a clear brief detailing exactly what I wanted. I also asked for applicants to include samples of their work so I could evaluate their skills as writers.

3 – Check their samples and references

I soon started to receive applications from interested parties. Those who had failed to include the information I requested in my advert were immediately discounted – if they were unable to read my job posting correctly, then I doubt they will be able to read any brief or job description properly, either.

I then read the sample articles each writer included in their application. I judged the articles not only by the quality of the spelling and grammar, but also by the writing style. You can have articles that are written with perfect spelling and grammar but at the same time they can be as boring as hell if the writing style is poor.

4 – Discuss the role with successful applicants

Once I have a shortlist of writers I am interested in working with (I told writers in my ad that they would not be recruited until January), I will contact them and offer them a trial run. I will give them a few subjects to write about and put them on a short-term contract of two weeks or a month. After this time, I will be able to decide whether I want to keep the relationship with each running indefinitely.

Before I even begin the trials though, I will need to draw up and have the writer sign a transfer of rights agreement.

5 – Sign a transfer of rights agreement

Without any agreement in place, the author of the articles could at any time claim additional compensation for the work or ask for them to be removed. By ensuring that a written agreement is in place before the writer is engaged, I am protecting myself against such an eventuality.

Having a signed agreement in place also benefits the writer as it should contain details about what is expected of them, along with information on their remuneration. Whenever you have someone else design or work on part of your site, make sure you have a written agreement with that person confirming that once payment is made, you own all the rights to that work.

Your thoughts

Have you ever outsourced content writing for your website? How did it go? Were you satisfied with the results? Feel free to name companies or individuals you had good experiences with, and also shame those that didn’t deliver. Have you any additional advice for people looking to outsource content writing? Please share your thoughts and ideas regarding this article by leaving a comment below.