Building and hosting successful forums on your website can be a lot of hard work.  Just like you would do if you were building a house, you have to build your forums with a good foundation.  Here I have for you seven different successful forum rules you should keep in mind when you either set up a forum script, or look to redo some of your forums to make them easier for users to navigate through.

Here is my general advice for anybody out there looking to start their own forums.

1. Enable Really Simple Syndication
   You want to give people as many routes into your forums as they need.  Making sure your forum has an RSS feed gives your users one more way to keep up to date on what is happening on your forums.
2. Use an SEO Friendly Permalink Structure
   You have to have a good permalink structure to keep the search engines happy, when they are crawling over your forums.  Use page paths like "this-works-great" rather than "index=conversation2".  By using a better permalink structure, you will get ranked a little higher in search results.
3. Only Make the Forums as Complex as You Need
   Do not go overboard adding a new forum category for every wild idea you think people might want to talk about.  Only create a new category or sub-forum if there is a real need or desire for it coming from the people who use your forums.
4. Find Good People to Help You Moderate Conversations
   Once your forums have been up and running for a while, you might look towards the community you have created for people who will help you enforce the forum rules, and keep the forums active.
5. Set Some Basic Rules for Posting
   From day one, you should have a basic list of rules for people to follow.  My best advice for this situation is to keep this list somewhere where everybody can see it, and keep it simple.  If you get too complex with your rules, nobody will read them.
6. Help Feed the Discussions
   Stop in daily and see what conversations you can reply to, and try to find topics of discussion that might get more people to come by and post their thoughts, ideas, feedback or solutions.
7. Link to Your Forums from Other Places
   You need to work hard at getting new links to your forums.  You can do this from your website (if you have one) and other like-minded websites that might share the same general discussion point of your forums.

Have another rule of your own that I might have missed?  Makes sure you leave a comment and share it with the rest of us.  Learn to take care of your little community,  and make sure their needs are being met. Also, always welcome feedback, because if people care enough to complain – it means they want your forums to succeed.

Without one you can not have the other – so I figured it would be nice to know how to find at least one half of that equation. Shopping for domain names can be a tricky task indeed. Hopefully though, with this guide by your side you should be a little more prepared for what is in store for you.

1. Search for Your Desired Domain Name

One of the first things you are going to want to do, after you figure out what domain you want, is to figure out if it is available or not. Now most domain name registers will give you a box to search from. Here are some of my other alternative favorites to do that work for you.

DomainTools.com | AjaxWhois.com | Whois.net

2. Don’t Pick a Hyphenated Domain Name

Think of ten of your favorite Web sites. Do any of them have hyphenated domain names? No. The first reason is, is that hyphenated domain names are really hard for folks to remember. When picking a good domain name, you want to find something short, relevant, and with a few keywords. Sure, there are a few companies that break that rule, take Amazon.com for an example.

3. You Should Be a Picky Shopper

It never hurts to be too picky when it comes to buying a domain name. Before you decide on which domain name register you should go with, you should do your homework on them and make sure they are legit and have no bad history.

Going with the trusted names out there might be the best way to go because then you know they at least have a large user base that they can’t afford to screw over.

Here are some domain name registers to start with:

GoDaddy.com | NetworkSolutions.com | Register.com

4. The Shorter the Domain, the Better

When you have a domain name, you want it to be something that people remember. Now this one should pretty much be common sense, but some people are a little lacking in that department. Something short or something that is unique is usually the best way to go. Overly obvious works as well.

5. Should You Buy Other Extensions?

There are a lot of different domain name extensions out there. From .net to .us, which ones should you buy? Well I would say first things first, you want to get that .com domain name. That is the one most people know and the first one they will try when randomly typing in your name via the browser’s address bar.

6. Purchase Spelling Mistakes

Do you have a domain name that is often misspelled or could be misspelled? In that case it might be a good idea to purchase a few more domain names for those misspellings.

Did you know that Gooogle.com will take you to Google? So does Gooooogle.com. Goooogle.com does not though. See the difference?

Don’t know why they couldn’t get the four “o” Google domain.

7. Get the “You Suck” Domains
Think you are going to be popular? Well in that case, purchasing a domain name with the word sucks after it might be a good idea. This will percent somebody else from doing it in the future and publishing all kinds of bad stuff about you. Did you know the folks at GoDaddy own GoDaddySucks.com? It will take you right to the front page. Beat your competition to this domain and get it now. if your competition hasn’t done so – you might want to by theirs as well.

8. Should Domains be Keyword Heavy?

Sure, there is nothing wrong with that. Search engines love it, and so do real live visitors. I would not sacrifice keyword usage for length though. If you have to choose between getting the keyword rich domain and getting the short domain – I would pick getting the short one.

9. Make Sure You Own Your Domain Name

You should always make sure that the domain name is registered in your name and not the name of the Web host or the domain name register. That way if you want to move to a different Web host or domain name register, the process isn’t such a pain in the rear. Want to find out who’s name your domain name is under?

Just do a simple Whois search and you should be given all the details there are. Make sure you always read the fine print.

10. Domain Name Acronyms

Now I am sure everybody knows what an acronym is. Just in case you don’t though, an acronym is a word that is formed by combining parts of other words. Web Hosting Show Fans acronym would be WHSF. It takes the first letter of each word in the phrase and makes a word out of it. Now do you want to use acronyms when you pick your domain name? I would say maybe. I would rather you get the whole phrase first, and then pick up the acronym later on down the road.

For example, www.ilovemashedpotatosandcheese.com might be a little too long of a domain name. In that case, it might be better to direct people towards www.ilmpac.com.

Bonus! Domain Name Resources

As a special bonus tip – I figured that I would share with you some of my favorite domain name resources. Here is the full list – feel free to leave a comment and suggest your own too!

Uwhois
SamSpade.org Tools
Network Tools
DNS Stuff
Ajax Whois
Domain Tools

Have anymore domain name shopping tips to share?

Why is it that people feel the need to wash their hands every five minutes after getting a new computer? I don’t think my hands have seen this much soap in a long time. Thanks!

Sincerely,

Hygienic in Texas

Try not to get yourself too stress out over making a comment about everything. A lot of folks just want to jump on everybody’s bandwaggon and add that, “Yeah, me too!” to the conversation. I want to read something that either informs me or entertains me. Before you make that next post on your blog, ask yourself if you are doing either one of those first.

For more tips and help check out the post Chris made a few days ago about eliminating the echo chamber. He lists a lot of things even I had not though about till I read it.