According to a relatively new study by the IDC (subsidiary of International Data Group) consumers spend twice as much time using the Internet as they do watching the Television.

If you have an Internet connection, chances are you are spending much more time surfing the Web than watching TV. A new IDC study of consumer online behavior found that the Internet is the medium on which online users spend the most time (32.7 hours/week). This is equivalent to almost half of the total time spent each week using all media (70.6 hours), almost twice as much time as spent watching television (16.4 hours), and more than eight times as much time as spent reading newspapers and magazines (3.9 hours).

It is plain to see that these are all just statistics and figures representing this, but in the eyes of the Global Community, is this information really accurate? Has the Internet truly surpassed its rival media? Also, isn’t it interesting that Print Media is not suffering anywhere near as much as some have claimed?

Photo by Bertrand. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

The Internet can offer us a far more interactive experience than Television can. With new advances and technologies on the Internet allowing us greater access to free multimedia users have taken to websites like YouTube, Guba, Google Video, and the newly-deceased Stage6. Brand new types of entertainment are being created to bring about this change in interactive multimedia. Many users of YouTube and MySpace have set up personal Vlogs for their ’shows’, allowing their viewers to interact with their shows by commenting and posting in their own videos to respond.

Of top of this, the changes in Accessibility and Usability standards on the Internet can also be thanked for the Internet statistically topping TV. It could even be said that the Internet is so accessible in homes today that Television and the Internet aren’t competing, but are working together to provide a better entertainment experience for all of us.

This is a growing concern for those backing Television after the widely-publicised Writers Strike, which effectively torn apart major shows (Heroes, to name one). I think it would be of no surprise to anyone to claim that more people than usual would have turned to the Internet to get their entertainment fixes over that period of time.

Whilst online media is becoming more popular, is original content actually the lifeblood of this new medium? Many videos are effectively clean rips off the Television, and many popular videos on these Social Media websites are just blog posts with an embedded video from the Television. As I said before, it is common for some people to watch a few low-quality episodes of a show on the Internet, then to go out and buy the DVD’s. Many people also go to the Internet to watch their favourite episodes whenever they want, showing where the choice factor becomes important to the consumer.

Another issue is the pastime of watching Television. For many people it is a family activity that the Internet simply cannot replace. PC’s still dominate the Internet and users are more fond of watching shows on their big screen over their monitors. However, in the future I am sure this will change, perhaps allowing media from the Internet to be transmitted using wireless technology to a Television for users to watch.

Of course, we cannot take this into account when dealing with statistics due to the nature of the Internet and the legal issues that come with watching free episodes and clips from Television online. If these were to be mentioned then surely Television would get a huge boost.

In the United Kingdom we are forced to pay a hefty price for a TV License. Without this license we are not allowed to use a TV to pick up any frequencies. The Internet requires no license fee, and many have obviously switched off their TV’s completely and catch up on all of their favourite shows online. Sadly, many networks in America actively block those from other countries from viewing their content, so viewers worldwide go to less legitimate websites to get their viewing fixes, some even download episodes. An example of this is South Park Studios, the official South Park website. They have recently released every episode of South Park online from just a bit after they have aired on TV. Users from other countries have been told they cannot view them, which isn’t a problem, because just by searching on Google we can find three other websites to watch whatever websites we want.

What can we expect for the future then? This author predicts a sharp rise in Television production companies using the Internet for their shows, eventually for these companies to release their shows solely for the Internet community. Sported by advertisements couldn’t these production companies effectively make far more money by cutting out the middle man (or middle-box). Applications like Joost have attempted to bridge this gap, but with extremely poor content (especially in non-US countries) they are nowhere near capable of overtaking the TV or even Social Media as we know it right now.

What is for certain is that Internationalisation will have to take place if piracy is to fall. Viewers worldwide are sick of waiting for shows to appear on our shores, and will download episodes whenever they please. In fact, the UK is the leading country for US show downloads, where users will openly download episodes sometimes months before they come out here.

At the moment it would be impossible to really say what is about to come. With the Internet at bursting point with this media explosion it would require a major networking overhaul for the Internet to become the haven of information that we wish it to be. Whilst the speed of the Internet seems to be changing extremely fast for the changes we wish to see it would take many years for any kind of impact to be made. The systems architecture simply isn’t there, and with legal battles and P2P cases being dragged out every single day in the western world when will these advanced be allowed to happen?

“I’m very flattered that you’d want to ask me this. I do like you, but not in the way you were hoping for. I’m sorry.”

Somewhere in time you have said this to a web page. Despite being extremely helpful there are times when a web page wants more than a working relationship with you, and wants to make it personal.

I was under the impression that the Internet was starting to evolve into something better, yet I was checking a few websites through some Google searches on a university computer (explaining why it’s IE and not the far-superior Firefox) and a fairly modern website threw this up at me.

Realistically, in this day and age, who on Earth would want to make your page their home page?! If I were to receive an email from a reader of my Blog telling me that they had made my website their home page I would recommend them to either one of these websites:

• Bloglines: The best online RSS Feed Reader on the Internet
• Google: The home page of the majority of users (other search engines are available).
• Google News: Find out what’s going on in the world.

In all seriousness, unless you’re the developer for a very large/popular/useful website that receives hundreds of thousands of visitors per day there is very little chance of anyone wanting to add your website as their home page. Even if there are users that want to there is no way they’re going to want a pop-up to automagically appear from a link or just by visiting the website to ask them. The best thing you can do to encourage a visitor to do this is to add a guide showing your visitors how they would add it themselves, perhaps with a link there if your users are in no way technologically oriented.

If you’re a budding Web Designer/Developer and you’re reading this then please never force this situation onto a user. It breaks the rythmn of a web page and is only likely to share off the users that you’ve managed to get there.

The whole Open Source movement has really kicked off around the world, with millions of websites currently running versions of WordPress, phpBB and other software. Not only this, but Open Source Software has enriched our lives with its free usage and superb functionality. Whilst commercial software will always exist and be a viable solution there are instances when open source will be the better solution.

But what are these instances?

As Open Source really gained momentum on the Internet it was only true to its nature for online open source scripts to dominate for websites. Whilst these free solutions help make our lives better the humble Web Developer no longer has to develop a bespoke system to cater for each user. With this in mind, can we ethically charge to ‘develop’ a website for a client when we didn’t create the system ourselves?

I believe we can.

Take WordPress for example. If a client wants a Blog added to their website then it would not be worthwhile to write a bespoke Blogging script for their website when I can just install WordPress and customise it to their liking. When written like this it sounds like the developer has next to no work to do other than to install a script, but there’s far more to it than that.

Whilst scripts like WordPress are so simple that anyone could use them well there is a definite learning curve when it comes to getting the most out of it, much like the learning curve in any piece of software you use. A developer has to work with the code of other contributing users to create a modified version of the basic tool to satisfy a project’s needs. It’s like saying that you should never buy Ben and Jerry’s because they didn’t create Ice Cream.

A Web Developer will become an expert user of the system and will turn a ‘bland’, no-frills version of the Blog you currently run into essentially an original piece of work that is only distinguishable as a WordPress Blog by the disclaimer at the bottom. In essence, we take a engine and create a car, and if there are any extras you require for your ‘car’, we can add them, even if we have to make them ourselves.

Trying to ’sell’ Open Source just shows the rather inane nature of Web Development. For a long time we’ve been obsessed with trying to sell a product, a few files that are placed on a web server so that a website appears. What we are really selling is a service to our clients. A product exists at the end, but all projects have some sort of deliverable. In this way I do not see any ethical dilemma with selling a service that uses Open Source software to create a website.

A Web Developer should be selling a solution to his/her clients, and a perfectly viable tool is Open Source software. With luck, the deliverables of your project will be a fantastic website that you are proud to call your own, regardless of where they code originated from.

Like many other good web designers/developers I take reasonable care in making sure that my code works in all browsers, as well as being valid to W3C standards. The barriers to Web Design are very low and any web page can be thrown on the Internet, regardless of what is in it or how good the coding is.

Validation has actually been around for a while now, and finally many seem to realise that validation is the only real way to go about creating a web page. Accessibility and Usability standards are also being raised with some popular websites sporting great new designs that cater for all. The tide is almost starting to shift towards users that create valid code, and whilst there are still those that produce poor-quality code behind their websites we have a new breed of web designers that are taking the top jobs and are pushing the boundaries to new and innovative designs.

When validation started to rear its head the cool thing to do was to stick one of the W3C’s validation badges on your website. You may recognise them from the majority of personal and small-business web pages, but for those who’ve never seen a validation badge here’s one of them.

Back in the day our web pages wore these badges with honour and pride, but what do they really mean to those outside of Web circles? Would a client actually care if your code was, according to the W3C (whoever they are are), valid?

Only in certain circumstances.

I think it’s time that businesses drop the badge from every one of their web pages. It no longer displays dominance for a webmaster, nor does it look particularly impressive. We are at a time in the Web’s history that we should all expect a web page to be standards-compliant, without having to display a link showing that our code is valid. For the average website it is not necessary to tell users that your web pages are valid.

A good alternative to displaying a W3C badge or link to the validation page on every one of your web pages is to set up an Accessibility page for your website to explain that your page contains valid code and has been tested to ensure that everyone should be capable of viewing the content on your page. To be honest I would rather see a link to an accessibility web page than a link to another web page that tells me that a website is coded properly. Who actually cares if your web page is coded properly as long as it works for them? If you’re ficcle enough to not like a web page because of invalid code then you’d better change your search engine!

The easy barrier of entry for Web Designers is both a great thing and a terrible thing. Great because it allows talented individuals to gain work and create fantastic web pages, and terrible because a lack of true validation (i.e. a page not displaying if the code is not valid) is the reason so many web pages on the Internet look like crap and function like crap.

As a student it’s very important for me to be in a constant state of studying. Recently I’ve had almost no time to myself to do what I usually enjoy doing, such as socialising, playing guitar, and the odd video game now and again. I’d like to say that this is the reason this post is a bit late, but it’s actually down to my Internet connection dying half-way through the morning.

If you’re actually working for a living then your time is far more important than mine! Whilst some students do like to see university as a job in the sense of turning up on time to do our work and attend lectures our entire professional futures do not ride on passing every bit of coursework or every exam. In the worst case scenario a student can fail his/her exam and perhaps have to retake the year, but for someone trying to pay their way through life not getting work complete or to an acceptable standard can mean your ass getting slung out of the office and onto the streets.

Whilst, obviously, working at work is a good idea, those that work from home or work for themselves may find it extremely hard to stay motivated. If you’re at home for the majority of the day working there will be a plethora of things to keep you distracted, including the very thing you need for your work! It’s a job in itself to stop your mind from thinking “maybe i’ll quickly check my Facebook profile…”

David Mitchell and Robert Webb have their own ideas as to what people working from home get up to.

Whilst I’m not going to be putting down any ‘rewards system’ for good work, I can provide some good advice to keeping on the ball when it comes to work.

Get out of the house!

I know you’re supposed to be working from home, but whenever you possibly can it’s a good idea to get out of the house! If you have a laptop it’s great to get outside in the garden, and if you have a cordless phone you’re sorted! Whenever I get the opportunity I spend a lot of my time in my university’s library, solely because it’s the only quiet place I can get to that doesn’t cost me a ton of money. Starbucks used to be a favourite of mine, until I realised I was just about breaking even from all the coffee and hot chocolates I’d buy. Find a quiet area away from the TV and you should feel more inclined to work.

Wake up early and consistently!

As a student I’ve learnt that the root of all problems comes down to sleep. If you’re sleeping at weird times and getting up whenever you please you’re simply not going to find enough hours in the day to get anything done. The most successful people work at times when there is little disturbance, a popular time being early in the morning or late at night. If you can become an early-riser you’ll benefit a lot in the long run, and your bed times will feel ten times better. This is coming from the world-renowned expert on sleeping (just ask my parents).

A good working environment!

Preparing a good work environment is key, ensuring that there is more than enough space for anything you’d ever need. It may sound weird but a lot of men come up with good ideas when sat on the toilet! The reason for this is not just the peace and quiet, but the fact that the area around them is completely clear. Simply put, people think better in quiet, open areas. It’s a good idea to keep things tidy, but open space is very important.

Make a substantial amount of time for yourself.

In other words, give yourself a break whenever you feel you need one! Whilst I can be very lazy when it comes to sleeping and resting a lot of it is down to the fact that I constantly overwork myself, sometimes working up to 24 hours straight. It’s incredibly unhealthy, and grinds productivity down to a halt. There are never enough hours in the day to get anything done, so shortening down your hours won’t matter in the grand scheme of things. At least you can feel good about not getting everything you wanted finished, rather than tired and depressed.

Keep to yourself!

Make sure that a large amount of your time working is spent on your own! This means no distractions from anyone else in the house, not even your girlfriend/wife/house-mate offering you lunch! Just you and your brain, all alone, working on business issues. Don’t worry, your grey matter will get sick of you pretty quickly, so you can put it to work.

Music and Playlists!

Some people like to work to music. I personally love working to music and do it all of the time. The difficulty with this is that if you decide to put music on then you’ll spend half of your day fiddling with playlists. Sadly, your clients aren’t going to pay you to switch songs around, so stick to the radio.

All of these tips are pretty obvious, but then again a lot of these sorts of guides are. All people need is something in writing and they’re sold, so hopefully you can use this article as a reminder not to slack off when you’re supposed to be working! I know I will be.

Recently I came across a quite perplexing question about Accessibility from someone I work with. Today, Accessibility is something we all demand from our web pages, although many websites commercial scripts still haven’t grasped the concept of accessible coding/design on the Internet.

The question arose from writing the Accessibility page in the FAQ for the script we were working on, and it was: “What name do you give to people with disabilities on the Web?”

As far as I am aware there is no universal name for people with disabilities that covers just those that would be unable to use a computer and/or the Internet. I believe this could be a major problem for businesses, as I’m sure there are many that could be offended by the term disabled users, or users with visual impairments.

In general I’m not a big fan of Political Correctness. A lot of it is entirely unnecessary and restrictive on the general public. PC has definitely gone crazy on more than a few occasions, so a lot of the time I don’t see such things as a worry.

However, this is definitely a sensitive subject where Political Correctness does deserve to be used.

The term ‘Disabilities’ is used all over the Internet, even though I often feel that such a general term should not be used. Just because an Internet user is disabled why should he/she not be able to access the Internet safely unless their disability restricted them from using it? Also, I’m sure there are millions of people that suffer from visual problems that wouldn’t call themselves disabled, so why are these being lumped in with the same definition?

That being said, you’re likely to offend at least one person through the way you word your accessibility message, and there is no real way of doing this. However, I would like to offer some suggestions that may work well and not offend any of your websites’ users.

First and foremost, users are people, and regardless of what you may think all people are equal. On the Internet people should be treated the same and have the same access to information as the rest of us. As Web Designers/Developers we can do this by ensuring that the websites we created are accessible to all that wish to use it. Much like how you would test a website/script to make sure that it works you must also test accessibility to make sure that it conforms to W3C guidelines, as well as manually going through the website with CSS/JavaScript/Images all turned off to make sure that there are no restrictions in place that could stop you from using any of the website functionality. Naturally, any Web Designer/Developer worth their money would’ve had this thought out from the beginning.

Finally, as far as an accessibility message for the users of your website goes, if your website is truly accessible then why should you need to mention any users with disabilities in the first place? Take this simple starting message for example:

“This website strictly follows W3C guidelines regarding accessibility and usability standards, and has been thoroughly tested to ensure that all users are able to access this website.”

Why should we have to highlight a users’ impairment/disability at all? If our websites are truly accessible then why aren’t we touting that fact across the website? With enough thorough testing all users should be able to view your website!

Even though manual testing can go a long way the Internet is still not perfect, and various equipment that people use to access web pages do not blend seamlessly with standards, much like how all websites aren’t coded to standards. Also, with other concerns, like spammers, we’ve been forced to take certain precautions that may not be entirely accessible.

At the end of the day issues like this simply shouldn’t be issues. The Internet is far from perfect, and we’re still learning how to use it properly. Let’s all take a step forward and sort this out once and for all.

I have been programming for about six years now, working with languages like Visual Basic, C, C++, C#, Prolog, and Java, not to mention all the scripting languages I’ve toyed around with! I like to think that my mash-up of programming knowledge only helps me with the end goal of programming, and that’s to reach an end product that matches project requirements.

Six years is in no way a long time to be programming, although there are times when I have worked with other that have been programming for decades that are writing sloppy functions, refusing to do any sort of testing other than “it compiles”, and/or outright developing programs that do not meet the specifications.

Despite these developers existing and coding right beside me I am in no way deluded as to my own ability with programming. Given a simple task I can work towards it quietly and efficiently with no real problems, occasionally slumping to a halt once a certain error halts my progress. Large projects can often be a challenge for me, and a lot of my time is spent learning about the best way to do it, rather than having the knowledge and experience to actually start doing it with minimal planning needed. If I were asked to develop something outside of my knowledge area I would fall flat on my face, work myself up into a frenzy and spend 30 solid hours revising on the best way to do this in a library or in front of Google.

The other day I was working on a few programs in my university’s computer lab, attempting to work with some serial port libraries in Java. After a couple of hours it was just me and a few other people left there and we all got to talking about software development. One guy there claimed to be awful at programming, even after working on developing software for enterprise Oracle databases for ten years and currently working towards a MSc in Software Engineering. As an undergraduate I asked him how he could think he was bad at programming when he’d graduated with a Software Engineering degree and worked for a fairly large company for a number of years, and the response blew me back:

“I have to be an awful programmer or I would never learn”

The only way he had got through his degree and through his job with Oracle is by improving on his shortcomings. If you cannot see where you are going wrong then how will you ever get better?

So now I can admit it! I am awful at Programming.

In many ways, programming languages do not help. After creating a few programs in C++ I almost felt invincible, and then I tried Java and it swiftly kicked me in the family jewels and told me that I suck. It’s a lot like learning to drive in a specialist learners car (the ones with a feirce clutch and two steering wheels). When you’re a beginner it’s good to get used to a feirce clutch so that your general car control is great once you become better and step into a real car once you’ve passed your test. You may stall several times a day at first, but with practice you learn from your mistakes and perfect your ability on the road.

As a student wishing to learn how to program well I have chosen myself some strict rules to follow during my everlasting learning process. As of now I am only using two programming languages at university, Java, Prolog and C. As a result I have taken on learning Haskell to give myself some variety, and so I can learn different paradigms to further understand and appreciate the architecture of a programming language.

The reason I have chosen such a strange way of learning to program well over the summer is because programming at university has only highlighted errors in my ways. I struggle with large projects, my overall experience with programming is very limited and I simply do not know enough about programming in general to make the best decisions.

I love to talk about programming, software engineering and computer science with others, and this is probably why I’ve managed to keep my love for the subject going. I actually find that talking about the subjects that you love is what keeps you knowledgeable about them! If you don’t talk about what you love to do with other that love it then how will you ever develop as a developer?

There are very few people that can claim to being good at programming, and all of these people are relatively well-known around technology circles. I’m guessing that if you’re reading this you aren’t well-known for your programming skills. If you’re not then you suck!

Now go out there and find out why you suck.

With this whole social media thing kicking off thousands of Web Designers and Developers are looking to set up shop by creating their own websites with social features included.

As far as I’m concerned it can only be a good thing that businesses are looking to expand to the newest crazes. The one problem I have with this is the access to data. A lot of Web 2.0 businesses never get the publicity they (may) deserve, and without a viable amount of back-links and information for Google to gobble up why would they ever become popular to the outside user?

Websites like MySpace and Facebook built up a following slowly, and had to climb up a fifty-foot high pile of its own social media relatives to get to where the two are today. Social Media is not easy, and in some ways social media websites are ten-times harder to get off the ground and into Google searches than regular information-based site.

Why is this? I believe it to be restriction of information.

To make money, businesses need to get visitors to return, and what better way of doing that than to get them to register for services. The problem with this and web applications in general, are that information is often not very static. The reason MySpace ranks well under certain terms is because it’s MySpace; it’s a huge website today and is linked to from everywhere around the world. The reason your website isn’t super popular is either because:

• Your product isn’t noteworthy - yet!
• Your product isn’t outputting that much static information for Google to pick up

As I said before when creating a social media website there must be a limit in what you give to visitors for free. From my experience, one out of one-hundred visitors will register for your website, meaning that you need to push visitors to your website, either by word-of-mouth or content. We’ll focus on content for now.

If your website has users already, use what information they have generated through the website to power guest-only services. For example, MyFootballClub.co.uk, the now-popular Ebbsfleet United owning website uses both guest-viewable content and membership-only content. With this mix over two websites users are enticed to join from how exciting the website sounds. All the power goes on behind the scenes, but information is out there, ready to Google to snatch up and serve as results to its users.

This all comes down to the dynamics of free information. Nowadays we all expect our music, videos and information to be absolutely free and available to view, so by not providing a ‘free’ method of giving users the information about your website that they require you’re just throwing away potential business. Today, free is worth a lot to anyone, and if free is good enough, free can sometimes become paid business. Web Advertising is built on the notion of free, and with so many people using adverts on the Web there must be something to gain from it all.

We’re not all going to make the biggest and best websites in the world, but we can get there if we balance things well. Get as much information out of your website as you can, whilst leaving all important functionality for your members and/or buyers. Only a small number of your users will actually buy your product, so give them as much information about your product as possible!

When I started this Blog I never really wanted to get involved in writing about Blog’s. You may find this ironic, but I detest the Blog. Six times out of ten Blog’s are full of opinionated shit that people use to back-up their own opinions. One only has to check the Digg website to see how users will use a Blog as a reference tool for their own opinions, regardless of if it could ever be true. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic Blog’s out there, but they are very hard to come by.

Today, my beef is not about Quality Control in Blog Content, but with Blog layouts.

Another thing you may find ironic is that I generally do not like advertising on Blog’s. I don’t disagree with a Blog containing advertising, but it is often complete overkill on screen real estate. Unlike with any other website where content can typically be interactive and dynamic, a Blog is episodic and when a user comes to a Blog they are only looking for content. I have no other reason to visit any Blog other than to read their old or new content. A lot of Blog’s are lucky to have users read through all of their posts, and if you are getting these users you’re doing a good job.

Advertising on a Blog is a heated subject as to what will bring the most revenue, although many popular Blog owners have taken a different approach; what will disrupt users less? This is the approach I love, and Coding Horror represents it beautifully. His small text-adverts approach in his sidebar works well, and I often find myself looking to see what I can find there that may be of use to me. As a very small Blog, I’ve decided on a similar approach in my side-bar, so only links are shown. Even though I don’t get many users I get a reasonable number of clicks, and I like to believe that many of these clicks come from users that want to view what they click. Whilst like every student I desperately need money I have no crowd to sell to, so I’m leaving my Blog fairly clean in the hope that those lucky users that find me will refer others and come back.

That being said, most typical Blog’s will stuff their Blog’s with affiliate links and product placements, sometimes with several squares for several products. On top of this, websites are sporting these new-fangled things called Widgets. Whilst sometimes these things can be useful, a lot of them are used again for, you guess it, advertising.

Sometimes, it feels like the typical Blogger is the more grown-up version of the typical MySpace user.

The signs are all there, opinionated ‘news’ about their lives, customised layout that can be found on loads of other sites, and most of all, thousands of little flashy images, quizzes and widget-y crap.

While many readers of this Blog may flee in disgust, I feel I must say that I don’t mean to target Widgets or Advertising. Blog owners are entitled to put whatever they want on their websites, but most people get too carried away in what they add to their websites. In a perfect world a Blog would only ever be about content, but advertising is a necessary evil. I just hope that most Blogger’s see the need to tone it down a bit.

Over the past couple of years I have been involved with running many forums, from small forums to gigantic forums housing thousands of users. These were never business opportunities, only activities for fun because I enjoyed the communities I worked with. Still, over my time working with forums I was able to learn a lot about them, from the code and templating systems behind popular forum scripts like phpBB and vBulletin, to the art of policing a large group of online users. In fact, my passion for running websites came solely from forums and moderating them.

Surprisingly, with the correct parts in play, and the main ingredient, traffic, any forum can become a success with minimal fuss. Here are a few rules I’ve learned over my time developing and running forums.

Create a solid set of Forum Rules

This is probably the most important part of starting up your own forum. When you provide users a way of communicating all manners of hell can break loose. To start off with, here’s a few basics that I would recommend:

Test Forum Rules

1. There will be no flaming or insults on the forum. All instances of abuse will be defined by the moderators of the forum.
2. Please do not post anything illegal on the forum. If you’re unsure whether something is illegal or not be sure to send a Private Message to a Moderator before you post it.
3. Please do not create multiple accounts. One account is more than enough for everyone.
4. No advertising in threads! If you wish to advertise your URL please put it in your signature.
5. No posting to adult content. Children may be able to view this forum and it is not in their best interest to post anything bad. Anything on topic that may not be suitable must contain a NSFW (Not Safe For Work) notice in large letters.
6. Keep all posts on topic.
7. Do not post in threads that haven’t been posted in for 30 days. If you wish to create a new thread when an older topic is there feel free to do so.
8. Before you make a new thread please check the forum to make sure no one else has already created it

Document all violations of the rules

Whilst time-consuming, this is the best way of policing a forum. Once you’ve written a clear and concise rules list all users and posts that break these rules must be placed in a staff-only area of the forum. A good format for this would be:

User [USERNAME] broke rule [RULENUMBER] in post [LINKTOPOST] on [DATE]

“Content of post that has broken the rules”

Action Taken: [WARNING/BAN/ETC]

It’s very easy for problems to fall between the cracks while you’re busy running your website and forum, so documenting every problem that comes up is a great idea. At least this way if a user is to repeatedly offend on your forum you know their history of behaviour and can use it to pass judgement.

Get Staff Members (Moderators)

The second you feel that your website is starting to get the best of you is the time you need to think about hiring moderators. Typically it’ll take a few hundred members before the work becomes too much for most administrators, so by that time you can think of doing one of two things.

1. Hire an outside staff member to moderate the forum
2. Hire an existing community member

I’ve always stuck to existing community members that I know I can trust. At the end of the day all they can do is follow the rules you’ve set down, and if they don’t they’re out on their ass and banned from the forums completely. This leads me onto my next point.

Staff Rules

It may seem excessive to give staff members/moderators their own rules to live by, but it’s required for your grand plans to work out. After all, every person interprets the rules in a different manner, including your own staff members. As far as rules go, this should only really outline what should be done if a user is to offend, and what warnings should be given and when. Also introduce them to your violations thread, and make sure they can post in it and know what format posts should be in.

At the end of the day, they are working for you, on your forum. This doesn’t mean that you cannot be friends with them, but it’s YOUR forum and you should expect nothing but the best from them. A forum is not a democracy. It is a dictatorship, and you have full control over everything.

Install a great and unique forum skin

It’s always been a rule of thumb for me to get a custom forum skin for every forum I run. Obviously on every forum I’ve been assigned as an administrator to I have created my own, but your forum will always be defined on how it looks and feels, and you should strive for only the best. More than anything else, there is one thing you should demand of your custom skin…

What you should demand is originality.

Chances are that most of your members have at least viewed another forum before, and most of them look the same, boring and mundane. Get a designer to create and code you an original design, tailored exactly how you want it. Whilst some templating systems are hard to develop for many of them are fairly easy to customise in any way you wish, so if a designer tells you that it cannot be done ask them to come up with similar alternatives, along with an explanation as to why it cannot be done. Chances are some designers won’t take on an extremely difficult task without some pushing, so give them a nudge and tell them what you want. If they cannot do it then go elsewhere.

Of course if you can make it yourself then go right ahead!

Give your forum some personality!

This is something many administrators never really think of unless they have almost expert knowledge of their forum script. On top of creating an original skin for your forums something you should really look to do is personalise any messages that users will interact with. For example, all email templates that are used to send registration and notification emails to your users could use sprucing up! Find out how to do this in your chosen forum script and write your own personalised one!

Also, small automated areas of your web page, like when a user is unable to access a part of the forum, as well as FAQ’s and Search templates can all use some remodelling and rewriting. It won’t take more than an hour to write some new content for your automated messages and emails. If you wish to personalise your forum a bit more get your designer to create some customised templates for these areas for you. If you’re getting a forum skin then you should milk it for everything you can (under the given contract).

Start with few categories/forums

Much like with Blogs, no one will go to a forum if it is empty. You need to create the illusion that there are many posts there, and the only way to do that is to start with less than three forums. That’s right, never start with more than three because you simply do not need them. Once you have users regularly posting in your one forum find out what the most popular topics are and create a new forum for that. Keep repeating that until you have your forum structure!

Believe it or not, but this is the main reason a lot of forums die. I’ve made this mistake a number of times, and have paid the price on more than one occasion. Once I started off with twenty forums as I had planned out the forum structure days before the forum was even up, and through excitement I kept it as that. Even though I managed to get a reasonably large number of members to join the forum never really looked that popular, and growth eventually grinded to a halt.

Give your Forum a sense of purpose!

This is the final bit of advice I can give you, and that is to make users feel that your forum is there for a reason. I’m guessing that if you’re running a forum you’re also running a site (if not you’ve got a hell of a task on your hands!), so be sure to promote the forums as much as possible throughout parts of your website. If you’ve written a popular news article create a thread about it in the forums and link to it on your website. People will need a reason to join your forum and if you don’t have a thriving community that members wish to join you need to use it as a form of interactive contact for your website.

If you wish to, you can also use forums to power some of your content. If you were writing an article on horses, and a forum member brought up a fantastic fact on breeding horses, with permission I’m sure the member would be very happy to be included on your website! In essense, try to link your website and forum together!

As much as I would like to give you an exact guide on how to create a great forum it’s impossible to do so. A forum needs the right content and backing to become successful, but one way you can help is by making your forum run as smoothly as possible and enjoyable for your users. I hope this article has been useful for you!