Message Board Dilemma ?

I just had to do this today. I was trying to find out about a certain vBulletin hack, and the forum actually made me sign up to read about it. I was annoyed, but I signed up anyway. So now I have a membership at that site that I will never use. So the way I see it its just going to artificially increase your member count at best. At worst its going to make people leave immediately because they can't even find out if they want to join your forum. They'll go someplace else that will let them read and find out what they need to know. How do I know if I want to join if I can't read most of what's there?

Something to think about ....

The forum group I do have open, is where most of the general posting will be/is done. Most of the ones I have closed for viewing are for member photo posting, and comment.

Since I have the general forum open, would you; or would you not open the rest for viewing.

I say leve it the way it is. If you just give member privliges to guests then no one will sign up.

Ristricting it a little is good.

I agree, and that was my thought. The other visitor views are; an advertising forum, and the message board news.

I thought by letting visitors post in the general forum, this would give them a little better feeling than exempting them entirely. And there are still a few convenience privileges, that members only have on the general forum.

Alright, I looked at your actual site. You've only got one forum open to visitors. I would maybe make a few more open to them. Especially since the forum is so new and you hardly have any posts for them to look at anyway. The Tips & Techniques one might be good for visitors to see.

I was thinking that this sort of thing could help to draw some of your shy users in. Sounds like you have a lot of those. So maybe they would sign up out of curiosity to see what they're missing, then it wouldn't be so hard to actually post if they found something interesting. You'd still have to strike a balance between things they can and cannot see. They shoud at least be able to see the thread titles (if possible).

(I'd kind of like to make some other comments about your forums here but I'll hold off....)

OH, you've allowed non-members to *post*???? That might be a bad idea. You'll have to see how it goes but that could just be an open door for spammers.

Ok; I now have four other forums open to visitor viewing, not including the general forum. I opened up the general photo forum to visitor posting, because some people just wont join forums. But they still have something to contribute. If that one is all I have to watch, it wont be to drastic.

# Besides, I can always find some poor snook to moderate it.

Steve - I came across this thread at the Admin Zone forums:

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9751&highlight=forum

Some of the posters there have brought up some good points for both sides of the argument.

Ok I'm new but I'm jumping head first to this site as its a perfect site more me

Anyways my 2 cents on this subject is. You should leave most of the forum open to visiters. You basically forces a person to do something that thye don't know about (unless its a well reconized board and they are referred there)

Basically how I did mine is limit Visitors for certain features. I have an Arcade which members can play over 50 games yet visitors can view what games are available but need to register to play, I have a Chatroom for members and so on. So I sorta tease visitors that theres more if they join.

NOW originally visitors never knew this and my problem is they visited and left. I installed this hack from theadminzone.com called

Community: Improve your registration & posting rates in 4 simple steps - updated 6/2

http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3560&highlight=steps

I did this and my memberships grew pretty well. I opened the forum June 15th this year (thats only less then a month) and today i checked and right now I have 168 members and 6,052 posts !!!

I hope this help you steve40.

Ok from all of the advise, and looking at some other threads on other forums. A picture is slowly emerging. One you cannot judge your traffic, or membership by any standard. Lots of things come into play here. The type of forum subject, how much competition you have, and the still harder matter. How much open, and how much closed. That too really depends on the forum.

A forum like mine is approximately 50% text, and the rest visual. If you leave it open totally, there is not much left to see. If you close certain boards, yes you will get lurkers joining that will never post. But from my past experience, you will have that anyway.

I see people talking about hundreds of views a day, and large gains in membership quickly. This depends entirely on your subject. I would assume a forum like mine, would only appeal to 10% of net users or less.

One problem with message boards, is there is really no good way to promote one. I think very few people find your forum or website, by searching the internet. These cross posting things may work, in some cases. But can you see someone who knows nothing, about your subject matter, making an intelligent post?.
This really does not work anyway. I tried that once. I had a bunch of guys come to a new board, and make some posts to kick it off. This resulted in a lot of posts for a few days, then back to zero. I think this really hurt more than it helped. It gave it the appearance of an unpopular board, that everyone just up and left.

Bottom line is, I guess it will fly or flop. Still leaves the primary question unanswred. How much to leave open????. (ENOUGH)