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What Happens After I Place My Order?

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Mike W.

One of the most popular questions we get from new clients is, “What happens after I place my order?” Great question because most platforms give you a zip file to download and install and host yourself or an ugly looking template that you need to customize. Kind of like coming home from IKEA with a giant box that needs to be assembled. Rest assured: that’s not what we have in mind!

Starting a new forum community is difficult enough without having to worry about the setup and design. That’s why, when you sign up with Ninja Post, we begin working on your behalf as soon as possible. New forums are deployed and customized to your specifications within 24 hours of signing up for your demo.

We believe in the power of checklists so here is the checklist we use internally when setting up a new client:

  1. Ask the client to point the sub domain of their choice to the Ninja Post server.
  2. Deploy the forum on behalf of the client.
  3. Setup statistics, analytics, and trending content dashboard pages.
  4. Match the design to the client’s site.
  5. Create the mobile logo and test on mobile devices.
  6. Ask client for feedback and respond to any special requests.

It’s so easy, it’s almost like magic. We love handling the technical stuff so you can focus squarely on your users and your community.

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Forum Software And “The IKEA Problem”

Posted on March 23, 2014 by Mike W.

Is there anything worse than coming home after shopping at IKEA? Now, the shopping experience is actually pretty fun. Navigating through the maze, thinking about what could be, and finding the perfect deal is a challenging and often times rewarding process.

The problem is that when you get home, you have to put everything together yourself. All of a sudden, that MALM chest or HEMNES bookcase or other Swedish-named what-have-you is just a heavy pile of wood and a bunch of screws in a box. Putting together your new furniture is a painful part of what should be a positive experience. Even though instructions are included they are not always easy to follow.

We find the same thing is true with forum software. Even if the end result is worth the blood, sweat, and tears, it’s painful to get everything set up. One of the most common things that site owners tell us is that they want a forum and its benefits but they don’t have time to get it started. That’s why we remove the blood, sweat, (and especially) the tears from the equation and make launching your new forum as pain-free as possible.

For us, setting up a new forum is easy and fun because we’ve done it so many times. Some may think that we have a twisted idea of what constitutes a fun time but to us — building beautiful forums that match your site down to the pixel is the fun. And hopefully it’s fun for you too, as a site owner. Building your community platform is not always going to be easy but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun.

we-help-you-set-up-your-forum.png

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Introducing Private, Members-Only Groups For Your Forum

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Mike W.

We spoke with countless community managers and learned that many forum owners need to create private threads, specifically for a certain subset of users. As a result of this feedback, we recently launched our very own solution to accommodate private groups within a larger forum community. This could be a members-only group for VIPs, a fringe benefit for paying members, or it could simply be a group for a certain niche within the community.

In most cases, the group requires privacy (from other users as well as search engines) and focuses on content that is specific to their niche and not relevant to the community at large. Often times, private groups are created exclusively for decision makers within the organization. This makes it easy for important people in the organization to reach consensus quickly, easily, and privately.

The screen shots below show the following steps:

  1. Create a private group

  2. Add users to the group

  3. Create a thread just for the group

  4. Private threads are designated with a color-coded arrow

  5. Thread is only accessible by members of the group

Posted in Forum Architecture & Design | Tagged , | 2 Comments

How Forum Communities Defy The Laws Of Thermodynamics

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Mike W.

One of the most amazing things about forum communities is that after they take off, they turn into perpetual motion machines. It could be argued that a true perpetual motion machine operates without any input of energy whatsoever, and forums fail this test because users input energy to make the community whirl.

Still, we like to think that our forum communities violate the Laws of Thermodynamics because they become self-propelling. Although users may come and go, activity never stops. The community keeps buzzing and evolves over time.

Regardless of whether or not the scientific community would accept forums as true examples of perpetual motion machines, it remains indisputable that watching a community spring to life and take on a life of its own is magical and one of the most gratifying accomplishments any site owner can achieve.

That’s why we love working with site owners to launch new forum communities and resurrect forums that are sputtering. If a site is getting lots of traffic but still not cranking along there are a number of steps we can take to combat low participation. When it works, it’s like the best job ever. (See comic below.)

Time and again we find that adequate traffic, plus a common sense approach to community management and a platform that is fun and easy to use provides the foundation for a successful, self-propelling forum community.

forum_communities_are_like_perpetual_motion_machines

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7 Ways To Gain Traction On Your Forum

Posted on March 11, 2014 by Mike W.

For a forum to become successful we have found the most important ingredient is a critical mass of users. But if you have traffic, how do you capitalize on it to gain traction? We offer the following suggestions:

  1. Make it easy for users to find and participate in your forum. E.g., create a large, unambiguous link from your main site.
  2. Get buy-in from the highest level of your organization (e.g., CEO) and thought leaders in the community. In other words, make sure the “cool people” are using your forum.
  3. Make your forum a welcoming and hospitable place for new users. Encourage participation by ensuring users will get a reply in a timely fashion.
  4. Help users achieve personal goals (especially make money, lose weight, achieve higher job satisfaction, etc.). Encouraging users to ask for help, encouraging users to help others, and encouraging #humblebrags makes for a good mix of content.
  5. Remind users to visit the forum by sending relevant email alerts and highlighting recent activity in other verticals (e.g., monthly newsletter).
  6. Let the “network effect” take over so the forum becomes self-propelling and users visit the site out of habit.
  7. Reward and recognize users for contributing to the forum.
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How To Celebrate Members’ Birthdays On Your Forum

Posted on March 7, 2014 by Mike W.

Assuming your forum has more than 365 members, chances are that it’s somebody’s birthday everyday. With Ninja Post, we recognize everyone’s birthday by automatically inserting a birthday cake next to their user name on their special day. It’s simple and fun without being overly dramatic.

We have considered doing more. For example:

  • Display the cake icon next to the user name in the “user panel” at the top of the page.
  • Sending users a special birthday greeting in the form of a Private Message.
  • Display a special birthday message on the forum homepage for that particular user.
  • Create a special page and/or link in the footer that displays “Members’ Birthdays Today”.

Of the ideas listed above, we believe the Private Message is the best way to engage a user. One reason is that this message will reach the user via email so they don’t even need to visit the forum on their special day. In turn, a customized birthday greeting from the site is likely to inspire the user to check into the site and say hello to everyone. People love celebrating birthdays, whether it’s their own or somebody else’s. One of our goals is to tap into this positive emotion.

forum_birthday_cake

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The Use Of “Loading…” Spinners On Forum Pages Is Downright Agonizing. Here’s Why.

Posted on February 27, 2014 by Mike W.

One of the most frustrating things to experience when surfing the web is to click on a link and wait for the page to open, only to see a “spinner” indicating that the content still needs to load. This is like listening to a public speaker with a bad case of hiccups. It makes for an uncomfortable user experience, especially on a forum where the process repeats itself for every. single. page. view. It quickly becomes painful.

This technique is known as “asynchronous loading” and there are times when it makes sense. For example, it is commonly used to load recent Tweets from Twitter onto an external site. The main page loads, and then a small amount of extra content is fetched from Twitter. This seems reasonable.

It is almost impossible to believe that any web programmer would condone the use a “loading…” spinner for ALL of the content on a normal page load. But it happens. Several forum platforms utilize this approach, although it is not clear why.

Perhaps faster page loads are the goal but in our experience, asynchronous pages take longer to load than most Ninja Post pages. Besides, who cares about a fast load time if it ends with a jolt to the user? Ninja Post is designed to make forum pages load quickly, not to get the user’s hopes up by displaying a series of “still loading” spinners that ultimately make for an agonizing user experience.

One example of a forum that loads content like this is from the ESPN forums. Try opening this thread, for example. We grabbed some screen caps below to show how painful it is just to view one thread.

async-forum-loading-example

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Single Sign-On With Ninja Post: Integrating Your Main Site With Your Forum

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Mike W.

Today, we spent time documenting our process for implementing our Single Sign-On solution, which you can read here. This page provides an overview to help site owners understand how we handle the flow between their main site and their forum. The goal is to help site owners conceptualize how the process works at a high level and how Ninja Post handles certain user states.

In the mock up below, we demonstrate how Ninja Post handles the following user states:

  • Not logged in at all.
  • Logged into the main site but has never used the forum.
  • Logged into the main site and already has a forum account.

single sign on user states

Once the flow between the main site and the forum is well understood, the next steps (e.g., managing the user’s session, instituting redirects back to the forum after log in, etc.) become easier to tackle.

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More Resources To Limit Forum Trolling

Posted on February 20, 2014 by Mike W.

As a follow up to yesterday’s post, A Common Sense Approach To Limit Forum Trolling, we thought it would be useful to post some additional resources.

The Crocels Trolling Academy, which promotes an Internet free from cyberbullying is a great place to start. This site contains invaluable resources including tips for handing trolls, research articles on the subject, and relevant information for law enforcement officials.

On a lighter note, we also recommend the Flame Warriors site by Mike Reed. Mike hilariously eloquently defines more than 80 types of “Flame Warriors”.

Flame Warriors

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