Indecisiveness.

How do you decide something when logic is telling you to do one thing, but your emotions are telling you to do another? I've found it nearly impossible over the last few weeks to decide between two very similar, yet very different things, and the choice that I've always come up with is the one that I know won't make me happy. So why do I keep wanting it?

A guide to creating an online community

Over the years, I've created many different forums, each with it's own goal or focus. For example, the very first one I created was about Star Trek (and it still exists in a completely different form than what I had intended it to) and the newest one is about a camera rumors website. Each website attracts it's own people...there are those who just come and make a single post (one post wonders) and then there are those who will stay and help you form the forum into what they want for themselves.

Each forum has it's own goal...the goal that I created for my first forum (Deck One, or TheStarTrekBoard at the time) was to create an experimental forum where the people who loved posting about Star Trek could get away from the troll ridden IMDB message boards. The people who joined the forum for the most part were those who were just trying to escape the nonsense, but we also attracted a few of those people who wanted to start fights. Of course now, 3 years after the website was created, most of them are now gone.

The important goal in a forum is to keep people happy, but not too happy. You can give them what they want, but you should always hold something back, because if you constantly give them what they want, then they'll have nothing to try improving on. If they want a gallery, then give them one, but make sure you can always do better on it than when you first created it. Just make sure that the members keep coming back, they are after all the ones who will keep your forum going, and who will define it's purpose.

Now here's some important tips about running a forum:

1. Don't overmoderate.

People hate being told what to constantly do. A forum that I once owned (the rest of the administration decided to boot me from it's presence, and is now a monopoly of what people can and can't say) now has too much moderation, and is slowly suffering because of it, with people being afraid to post for public embarassment by the staff.

2. Don't become a part of your community.

I know this is hard to understand, but you have to treat your forum like you're the boss of it. You can't make those friends that would give you the deer in the headlights look if you were to have to ban them or punish them for something...but that of course doesn't mean you can visit your community and get to know your members...just don't become one of them.

3. Themes are important.

If your members don't like the theme, then change it, but don't keep changing it. People hate things that are very different, so if you constantly change your theme then people will start leaving.

4. Leaving.

People will want to leave, get over it. They'll realize that the forum is not for them, and then they will delete their accounts. Don't feel like you did something wrong, because you didn't. They just decided that they didn't want another website with their information on it. However it a lot of people are leaving at once, then you might want to reconsider your policies.

5. Rules.

Don't make rules. Something that I learned a long time ago from a website called Flickr.com is that rules aren't needed to run a great forum type of community. Create guidelines instead. Give your members the free will to do what they want, as long as they stay within those guidelines. This gives them to creativity and ability to form the forum into what they want to, and not what your rules tell them they can. The guidelines however, will exist as a form of understanding between the staff and members, letting them know that they can't do everything that they want to. They'll form their own community, and grow within it, as long as you give them the chance to do so.

6. Layout.

Layout is very important to a forum, because people won't post if they don't know where, and they won't change their profile if they don't know how to find it. You need to make sure that things are clearly labeled enough to where people know where to post and expand, but you also don't want to have too many boards. I'll get into this more later.

7. Keep it simple, stupid.

Those flashy and fancy graphics aren't as cool as you think they are. A simple layout and simple graphics will make a great forum. Things that flash or are animated just make people irritated, and I know this from personal experience.

8. Ask for suggestions.

You're not perfect, and your forum members will realize that more if you ask them how things should be. Make some polls, change some things and then ask them how they'd like them changed instead. They're forming the inside of this community, so help them reflect it more on the outside. Just remember not to listen to every single suggestion, if you try to please everyone then you'll please no one.

9. Boards.

Boards are the most important part of the forum. This is where the posts go, and those are what help your community grow and expand into what the members want it to. Make sure you have enough boards to where everything doesn't blend together, forcing people to wade through things that they don't want to talk about to find the things that they do, but also don't create too many boards. Having a ton of boards with only one or two posts in them doesn't make people want to scroll down the page to find what they're looking for. Try to keep it as simple yet expansive as you can.

10. Have fun with it.

It's not a real job, and your income isn't coming from it. Remember to not take your forum as seriously as a job because if you do that, then you'll start to become a control freak and your members won't like it there anymore. If you have fun with them, sometimes making a joke or changing something to make people laugh, they'll want to come back and help shape your community, and they'll know that they can let themselves relax a little more.

There are tons of other things I could post, but I'm not going to. Remember when building a forum not to listen entirely to anyone else, but start to form your own guidelines and hopefully your forum will be a great one.

Those things...

There's nothing like having a day filled with mixed emotions, some bad, and some good, that makes you feel the worst. You have no idea what you'll feel next, or what is going to happen to you...but then somehow, out of all the confusion, something really good happens. This something can be as small as finding something tasty that you forgot you bought in your grocery bag...and that small something can really change your outlook on the day.

Those photos that you just can't stop thinking about...

Every once in a while, I'll take a photo that I really like enough to want to keep going back to and looking at over and over again. Recently, I took a trip to San Francisco with my friends on the Larkspur ferry (highly recommended, by the way) and I took this one of the Golden Gate Bridge (my all-time favorite thing). I can't stop thinking about it.

Ocean Memories

So I've created a blog...

I'm not sure why exactly I decided to make one of these, I guess I though it would be a good way to showcase who I am in some kind of written format. I'll just post my photos or my thoughts of that day on here, whether anyone reads them or not.