What's the best way to advertise....

[Little Blue]

oops, I highlighted that message

I would say its all about google and your chosen niche. Find affiliates with similar topics and exchange links with them. Submit your site to directories. Register on as many competition sites as possible, and have your sig / profile homepage with your site in it and try to post like a regular. The more incoming links you get, the better google likes you (legitimate links mind you) so the higher you'll appear in the search results for your keywords. Also, the sig thing has the advantage that if your a decent memeber people will be inclined to follow the link. I hope that makes sense.

[Markus. D]

have a frontsite.

[Quindiana Jones]

Pray. We all love disappointment.

[Owen Macwere]

Ohhhhhhhhhh, I am the best one who can help you with that, should have just asked. Great I am with forums take mine as an example, most successful forum in the whole galaxy of the net.

[Madonna]

1. DON'T USE A FREE BOARD. I cannot stress this enough. If I see invisionfree or proboards or whatever in the URL, I immediately exit out as it's already proven it's not worth it. If you want a serious forum, you gotta pay for it.

what

Do you specifically care that the forum script is free or if its hosted by proboards or the like?

Examples: [This] versus [this].

[Owen Macwere]

Examples: [This] versus [this].

[Vincent Valentine]

1. DON'T USE A FREE BOARD. I cannot stress this enough. If I see invisionfree or proboards or whatever in the URL, I immediately exit out as it's already proven it's not worth it. If you want a serious forum, you gotta pay for it.

2. Have other content besides just the forum. Look at this site, it has a frontsite that draws attention.

3. Have a specific enough niche-topic. People go to forums to discuss something. A hugely generalist forum will not work. Have some specific focus that unites all of the people who might be posting there.

4. Advertise the hell out of it. PM spamvertising is pretty tacky, but if you have other content you can usually find ways to advertise it. Note that this may cost money.

5. Get lucky. Duplicating the success of another board is nigh impossible. Some boards sink, others swim. In the end, most of it is up to your luck.

This list is pretty much everything you need to know, and as a paid web-desinger / manager I can tell you that most of them are very true, which will probably be to your disappointment.

Unfortunately, it's true that freeboards on a website such as proboards or invisionfree rarely do well, though it's not impossible. The problem is, a site doesn't just pop up on the internet and people suddenly find it, just like that. Forums are particular difficult for Google and the like to navigate as well.

Don't expect it to become a huge forum, such as here. That's not going to happen unless you invest in a website with a subject matter that will actually attract enough people. But it's not impossible to make a site that will be active.

You need to advertise the hell out of it. Get all your friends to joi. Get a strong staff who will stick around and help. Get them to tell friends, and their friends to tell their friends, and so on. Given time, it's possible to make something small, but fun.

[Dr Unne]

1. DON'T USE A FREE BOARD. I cannot stress this enough. If I see invisionfree or proboards or whatever in the URL, I immediately exit out as it's already proven it's not worth it. If you want a serious forum, you gotta pay for it.

<a href="http://www.phpbb.com/">phpbb</a> is free and I know of many large forums running it. Many larger than EoFF even. I would say rather than "Don't use a free board", something like "Host your own board, don't use a cookie-cutter mass-host where your board is lost in a jumble of thousands of others".