Topadmin.net - for blog and forum admins

Last year I sold one of my forums (a webmaster forum) and tried to stay away from creating 'yet another one'. Was able to succeed for almost 1 year

Since my schedule with my web design clients has been lax the past weeks (Holidays, beginning of the year), I could get back to my old 'hobby': posting in forums. And I just noticed people talk about this new script, xenForo. Well, they've been talking for a while already, but I wasn't that interested in it till few days ago when I bought a license and installed it on a live site.

(I think the admin here should get my thanks since this forum is the fist XF I am registered in and you guys made me like it ).

I have installed the XF on a new domain www.top-community.com. The design is still 'not there', since I had some issues with the theme (well, it's something new for me and I didn't quite get it from the get go). My intention is to have a VERY light-white theme, very simple and modern, with as little of a forum look as possible. As said, am not there yet, I think this weekend I'll go crazy with the layout more. I'd like to achieve something similar to www.invatam.net, my Romanian webmaster forums (that's on VB).

What do I want to do with this? I'd like to run a VERY serious forum admin. Am not interested in post counts and stats, this is why, aside the welcome area, everything is specialized talk. It's thought to cater to blog owners (there's a need for a good forum in this niche too) and forum admins, since this is what we're all doing and love.

The articles are now in 2 separate categories for: BLOG and FORUM admins. I try provide some first-hand information, since I've done this job for the past 10 years and, no matter how cool is to work as a web designer, I can't stop wishing to have my communities. I think it's some sort of a drug

I will try not to 'spam' this thread with useless updates, maybe from time to time let you know when there's a new article on the forum niche that I believe our users here would like to read.

I am of course open to your feedback (this is why I have opened the thread anyway) and hope that in time the community will help some people with their blogs and forums.

An update: the theme has been tweaked more to look better than it was before. Will have to work on something on the home page design, but so far I am pleased to how it looks.

Any comments and ideas are more than welcomed. Here is the link again, so that you don't have to sift through that Balzac novel above: www.top-community.com

This is why your forum WILL fail - a pretty 'mean' article, but it kinda sums it well. Have done my share of killing my own communities in the past and these are the reasons why they stopped working: I used a free hosted solution (no domain name and hosting account), had ugly skins, couldn't be bothered to start new topics for my few active members, didn't allow signatures, wasn't active enough and didn't know how to handle some criticism, even if well intended.

You can find out more about the reasons in the article.

Have added another useful article for all forum owners who are interested in hiring paid editors to help with the content. Based on my experience for many years, here are some tricks: how to make the most of the paid posting services

When should you hire moderators?
Learn to properly run your community, hire the right people for the right job.

Other updates: we have a 'forum cash' mod in place, members can earn points for posting, can use them to get advertising on the forums, hire people to post for them and (soon) cash out REAL MONEY.

First month results:

- over 2k posts (excellent quality, love my members)
- over 3.5K visits (60K pageviews)
- Alexa rank is under 1 mil. hope to get it in a smaller number
- we have been approved in the BuySellAds marketplace, which is my best record so far (never could do this with a 1 month site).
- our members can buy advertising based on the points they get for posting and from now on REAL domain names and cpanel hosting. So that they don't have to use lousy free hosts again. If you don't want to spend the money, put in a little time in our community and you'll get them for free.

More features and updates to come.
I'd like to thank all our members for a terrific first month. I hope we can prove to be a good place for blog and forum admins to hang around.

Ramo,
Excellent information and content in your topics, this is the right information for a new forum developer or owner!!!

rgp, thank you for your kind words.

We have 2 new articles that should help other forum admins. One detailing few tricks to have a 'slender' database, even for a larger forum and the second one for the ones who want to earn more money from their communities.

• Forum Admin: how to keep your forum database clean and fast
• Forum Money: How to make money online with your forums

Have added a trade system on the forums. People who get various services or trade posts/links can now give feedback to their deal partners.

A new article detailing some of our biggest mistakes when we start as forum admins:
The 10 mistakes new forum admins make

Forum budget: how to make the most of the money you have

Personally I am appalled to see the lack of ANY business skills most forum admins have. I have started learning more about how to save money and invest 3 years ago, when I started my small business and I try to think in the same terms, when it comes to investing money for my forums.

I really hope this article will help you all make better decisions and make the most of your budgets, whether you have 10 bucks to spend on your forums or 10k.

2 more updates:

1. I have written a forum management book, which is free to download.
2. have moved the forums to a new better domain name. please bookmark the new link: www.topadmin.net

Another update: we have a JOB marketplace on the site. You can find it at topadmin.net/jobs.

You can get your own profile up and set the jobs you're willing to do (with the desired prices) and also hire people from the site, by browsing their profile. Registration is FREE and we also have a zero commission policy. All you need is a paypal account and that's it.

Happy freelancing

Another article that should help the people who BUY forums. I see many admins who have no experience with buying-selling sites, so maybe this helps you save money and get a better deal. Will post a 'how to sell' article in few days.

So, How to BUY a forum.

More updates from TopAdmin.Net
1. we have a pr 2. Thank you google
2. the job board works great. We have already freelancers who are getting paid real money for their jobs. Some have finished work and received money and feedback. Some were rehired.
3. the forum passed 6K quality posts. New articles can be found and a lot of useful information.

Looking forward to ending this month on a high note again, I'm very pleased with how it all works.

should even change the title now dojo

We need a mod for this, I can't edit the title. Anyway, top-community.com is still my domain and has a full redirect to topadmin.net, so we're covered

Updates:

More jobs/freelancers on the job board. Have paid tens of jobs already, we have our freelancers working for clients. And until August 1st, no one is paying ANY commission.

The forums work great and have a lot of interesting threads/articles. We're getting close to 7K posts and our traffic is steadily increasing. New members join and get help for their sites/forums. 2 of our main advertising spots are already sold out, which means getting off BuySellAds wasn't actually a bad idea.

More articles coming soon, I have some ideas and just need few hours to make them happen.

A brand new article for everyone who's doing 'forum posting' to market their site:

How to promote your forum in other communities
Find out how to promote discreetly, how to choose the best communities to marker yourself in and how to make this all effective and get good results.

Many forum admins come to a point when they can't or won't run their forums anymore. What should they do? Close down? Sell? Let a member take over? I can't make the call for you, but I was able to prepare a forum selling guide for all admins who are looking into selling their forums:

How to sell a forum
I have sold 2 forums last year, this is some of the stuff I did to make sure it was a good sale. Hope it helps you guys too

Had an ad campaign expire today, so I decided to use the header area for the site only and not sell advertising there. We have a new logo (well, it's been done almost a month ago, it's on my t-shirts, business cards etc) and also reworked the header a little. The idea was to make it light and simple, so that people can focus on the content

Here is how topadmin.net looks today: click me