Is it a good idea to build your community around a portal?

Is it a good idea to build your community around a portal? The reason I ask is because I am going to be rebuilding my website. I have owned this website sense 2003 and have had allot of real life problems that have caused me to shut down the website. The website has been down for about a year.

I have been looking at Joomla and SMF. This is what I need the website to do. I need articles to be displayed on the front page. I also need the top 10 posts from the message board to be displayed on the front page as well. I need to be able to add articles into the website on the fly. I also need a place where users can add their own articles to be reviewed by me. Once approved I want them to be added directly into the main pages of the website. Also I need to be able to make subforums on the forum.

I just do not want to get a good community growing and then all of a sudden have to change the total layout of the website. Do you think Joomla and SMF are good building blocks? Tell me what do you think?

Actually I haven't used a CMS before, because I code my own stuff (even this site which is SMF is very hacked)

I supose the main reason to have a portal, and not just a forum, is that a site that is only a forum is difficult to have success. I believe that even when you have the portal, you should wait some time to build traffic, and then make the community site.

When I started this forum(before a couple of months), thetopsites.net (which is the main site of the network) had about 15.000 unique visitors which is a respective ammount of traffic, and it was really hard to start the forum. Actually I give away a lot of stuff to make this site has some interest.

I am not telling you this to discurage you, I just think that you should wait a little before creating a forum site over your portal.

About CMS software there is a thread here : http://www.webdigity.com/index.php/topic,128.0.What+is+your+favourite+CMS.html

 Thanks for the link. The problem is my website is a help website so people need a place to ask questions when they do not understand something. When the website was running about every 1 to every 100 unique visitors asked a question on the boards.

The big problem I had with the website was getting people to come back. After their questions were answered and they knew what they were doing. They never came back. Thats why I want to run a Portal so I can keep feeding the website new articles. I also need the website to be driven by the forum. I need the top 10 posts or the 10 most recent posts displayed on the main page. I want to give people a reason to keep comming back to the website.

The old website was static HTML with a forum and required allot of maintenance to add new articles into the website. I want the new website to be easy to maintain so I can work on other projects.

1% is a very good conversion. Maybe then you should start with a small forum too.

Regarding to the 'make visitors come back' thing, you should mail your members (but not too frequently) with contests.

I think contests is the best way to keep a forum alive, and I think this is the reason that this forum is active too.

May I ask you the exact topic of your site?

I will PM you the topic of the website.

One of the top guys on the SMF board, Bloc, has created a portal specifically for SMF that I believe covers all your qualifications. His site is:
 www.tinyportal.net
He's a really nice guy, too.

Ideally, coding your own site is more original. However, a lot of people might never run into another "portal" site. You can customize the appearance through colors, graphics, and gradients, too.

About people coming back, I always return to the same sites that have helped me in the past. But, I have my own board to run, too. So, I'll post a few times to pay back the favor, but I can't devote myself as a regular poster. I run a comedy board.

I agree with Nick. Running graphics contests and the like will draw back technically talented posters. If you take free requests for graphics, code, and such, you'll draw back people like me.

Good luck with your board!

I think so!

But it's not easy.

i must admit, it is quite difficult when u are first starting out. but the rewards pay off in the end.

 Well I thought I would update this thread. I went out and spent the big bucks and bought a vBulletin owned license. I also bought a skin and I am using the vBadvanced CMPS. The website is still a rough draft but its getting there. Setting it all up has been harder than I thought.

I have tons of security mods added to my server and vBulletin didnt like them. But its all sorted out now and everything seems to be running smooth.

The vBulletin control panel is simply amazing to put it lightly. You cant even compare phpBB or SMF to it. You defentaly get what you pay for. I am not knocking free forums at all, but just stating there is a huge difference.

I bought vBulletin because 90% + of the vBulletin forums are doing well to extreamly well. I think people like the look and feel of it. Buying vBulletin dosent mean I am going to get a million users but it sure does lay out a nice foundation.  :)

Good. Now you want a unique layout and you are done.

Good luck with your site :)

Ahh thats the problem I dont know how to code for crap. I do not even know the first step to making a layout. When I get some more money I play to pay someone to make a custom skin for the forum.

If you want my honest opinion, there are so many forum/community sites out there, that there is no room for non-proffesional looking (at least) sites.

So my opinion is to start the site only when you will be ready 100%. Otherwise your promotion will not have good results.

Well it looks proffesional, its just not a custom skin. I bought the skin from vBSkinworks. Making it look proffesional is the whole reason why I went with vBulletin. I am thinkinh about buying the copywrite removal for the portal and the skin. I recived a second skin for free I just havent used it yet. I may let the users pick their own skin. Any thoughts about them picking their own skin?

Maybe I didn't spell that right. What I was trying to say is that the users know the default skins of each forum software, and they don't really like them.

Letting users pick their skin it may be a large coding prob, as then you will have to apply all the mods you do, to all the skins that you provide.

I would suggest to go with one skin.

This isnt my website but its the same CMPS and skin that I am using. Tell me what you think of it.
http://www.clubracer.net/index.php

I don't like the colors, but I think it is ok.

Well hopefully its enough to get me started  ;D And once I am up and running and I can show my wife that people are intrested. And then I can squeeze the money out of here for a new custom skin  ;D




This is the other skin that I have. http://vbskinworks.com/forum/index.php?styleid=166

That's a good plan.

Hope the best for you :)

BTW : I am moving this thread to the forum building board.

I dont think it will be good to have a portal with an empty forum at the start. It will be better when you have a lot information on the site with the portal. =]

Well I am off and running and working on getting content any way that I can. Sooner or latter the forum should take off, well at least I hope it does.