I’ve gained a lot of experience running and working with bulletin boards in my day, although most of my experience has been based on numerous mistakes. In 2004 and 2005, I established a number of communities, but most of them wound up being unsuccessful for a number of reasons, and that’s pretty much how I learned NOT to run a community.
Well, a few weeks ago, Patrick O’Keefe (of phpBBHacks.com fame, as well as a number of other communities and websites), released a brand new book called Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards. Patrick was on phpBB Weekly #050 back in February, and in addition to talking about phpBBHacks.com on that episode, he gave us an early preview of his book. Since then, he sent copies to both myself and David Lewis for us to read and review. (Plus, we’ll be giving away an autographed copy on phpBB Weekly #061 on May 10th!) I recently finished the book, and am quite excited to have the opportunity to review it.

Managing Online Forums starts out on the first page by posing the question: “Is This Book for You?” It’s an important question to ask, because this book is not like many other books out there. This book is not a technical book; it is not a user guide; it is not a manual. This book will not teach you how to install vBulletin and it will not teach you how to set permissions in phpBB3. There are already numerous other books on the market (not to mention the developers’ own user guides) that will show you how to do that. This book also tries to steer clear of writing for a particular forum software. Although at one point, the book does give recommendation to either phpBB or vBulletin, this book is really aimed for any community software, and it could even be interpreted for Google Groups (or insert your favorite Web 2.0 group management service here), blogs, or social networking sites, etc. Only a few pages show any hint of a phpBB-bias (since Patrick has used phpBB2 throughout his tenure, as he does indicate in this book).

Nevertheless, this book is about community management. This book is the kind that goes over how you build a successful community from the ground up. The chapter titles probably give you a good idea of the scope of this book: Laying the Groundwork, Developing Your Community, Developing Guidelines, Promoting Your Community, Managing Your Staff, Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos, Creating a Good Environment, Keeping It Interesting, and (everyone’s favorite) Making Money.

Patrick starts out in Chapter 1: Laying the Groundwork by going over the basics for someone getting started with a new community. These questions include “What will your community cover?” and “Whom do you want to attract?” Chapter 2: Developing Your Community gets into everything that someone setting up a new community would have to deal with. Again, it doesn’t include the technical details of installing a board, but it does go into other decisions that new administrators will have to make such as choosing a name, domain name, and web hosting; setting basic settings, user options, and setup options; design, layout, and customization; and other things that you should do in a new community (such as backing up!).

Many new forum admins assume that the hard work stops right there; Patrick doesn’t. The rest of the chapters go into other things that all successful communities have to address in order to be successful. Chapter 3: Developing Guidelines goes through why you should prepare user guidelines, and then discusses over two dozen things that user guidelines should mention and take a stand on. Chapter 4: Promoting Your Community talks about the many options that you have available for promoting your community, including some (really basic) search engine optimization (SEO), directories, partnerships, advertising, link exchanges, contests and giveaways, and other kinds of promotion. Chapter 7: Creating a Good Environment talks about the things that you should do to maintain a good environment in your community. In the chapter, he talks about how important respect is to maintaining a strong community, being human yourself (as the administrator), etc. This is also where he coins his “holy trinity” of controversial discussions: politics, religion, and web browsers. (And, I’ve got to admit, I myself have fought a good many browser wars in my day–he’s not kidding about how tempers can flare in a discussion about web browsers.) Chapter 8: Keeping It Interesting talks about some feature ideas that you can use to spruce up your community and keep it exciting. These can include things like newsletters, RSS feeds, bots, posting games, contests and giveaways, chat rooms, awards programs, member of the month, etc. He also describes some examples of these ideas that you could easily steal and use on your own communities. And finally, although not a major focus of the book, Chapter 9: Making Money talks about some of the ways that you can monetize your community, including suggestions of some of the resources available and tips on how to utilize them.
Chapters 4, 8, and 9 also include additional tips from someone named Ted Sindzinski, whom Patrick describes as “a marketing consultant who has helped major web communities and Inc. 500 companies increase their marketing and advertising effectiveness.”

You’ll notice that I skipped Chapters 5 and 6 in that laundry list because I wanted to give them special attention, as they are definitely (in my opinion) the most significant chapters of this book. Chapter 5: Managing Your Staff is a whopper of a chapter, but in it he gives a lot of very important pieces of advice on how to attract and manage excellent staff members. The chapter starts by talking about how you, the administrator, should lead and the leadership qualities that you need to possess to run a successful staff. It then moves on to how to communicate with your staff (including dealing with Staff Leaks), and how to maintain the chain of command among your staff. The book then goes in-depth into the process of moderation, and then into how to put together Staff Guidelines and a “Situations Guide.” Finally, the chapter wraps up with the way that you should choose new staff members and what to do when it’s time for a staff member to move on.

Chapter 6: Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos is my favorite chapter in the book, and it probably ought to be required reading for every new community administrator. Every successful community is going to have to deal with idiots who show up with the sole purpose of messing things up and causing problems, and the way that an administrator (and his staff) handles it is what can make or break the success of a community. Chapter 6 is also one of the most entertaining to read, because Patrick writes the whole thing off of his own personal experience. He talks about his experiences with almost every possible problem that you could think of, and then some. Seasoned administrators will likely encounter sections in this chapter describing something that they’ve had to deal with before. But after addressing all of these situations, making you feel a bit intimidated and somewhat sorry for him, Patrick covers some of the solutions that you can use to help deal with some of the most common infractions, such as a post reporting system, notices, and other tools that are available. He then goes into detail about banning, including avoiding public humiliation, discussing when you should ban, the various banning methods available, and how to deal with ban evaders. The moral of the chapter: Keep your head and act with a professional manner at all times; your community will be better off for it in the long run.

In addition to having a number of useful tips, Patrick also throws in some useful resources in this book. The book is filled with examples from a number of the boards that Patrick has been a part of (or has been in charge of), including example guidelines and situation guides, etc. The appendices at the back of the book include a number of links to other community management resource websites, as well as blank templates for user guidelines, staff guidelines, and contact templates. The book’s website has these available in downloadable form, as well as example forums to illustrate some of the concepts in the book.

Although this book is not a technical book, there were a few cases where I was wishing that Patrick did provide a few more technical details for some of the sections. For example, there are some places in the book where he describes things that you can do to expand your community with additional features and tools, but he leaves you in the dark for exactly how you go about adding these features, or what MODs or hacks you can use to add them. However, those few things aside, this book is filled with almost everything that any community admin would be likely to encounter, and although no one is going to follow each and every tip that Patrick puts forward, he offers a lot of good insight on how you can make your new community a success.

The Final Word
The internet has made it really easy for anyone to put together an online community, but a successful community requires administrators to go far beyond the developer’s user manual. Managing Online Forums is a brilliant and impeccably written book for administrators who have the time and the passion needed to turn a community into a success. If you have a community that you want to succeed, you definitely should read this book so that you don’t find yourself learning these tips the hard way.

Full Title: Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards
Author: Patrick O’Keefe
Publisher: AMACOM Books
Price: $24.00
Book Website: managingonlineforums.com
Final Rating:

Tags: administrators, book, communities, forums, guide, guidelines, management, Managing Online Forums, marketing, Patrick O'Keefe, phpBB, review, staff, tips