Hey All,

In the beginning before our site started to get noticed we had all the features of the board open, i.e. private mess., members e-mail addresses, hyer-links, etc.

Then someone started their own site with the same content that use to be a member on our board. Thats when things changed quite dramatically. They did everything they could to take our members to their site.

My only choice was to turn off all the features except the basics. At one point I even went as far as telling members that they could not post their e-mail address (The people from the other site would post one sentence answers to the questoins and post something like... if you have any more questions e-mail me at ---@yahoo.com). Of course the e-mail address rule did not last long, talk about a dying board!

I have worked my ass off to make a great community and someone is going to try and take that away from me? IT WILL BE A COLD DAY IN HELL when I let that happen.

Instead of staying bitter and doing the same thing to the other board, I have decided to focus on the postive and build my community that much stronger.

Steps to building a stonger community:

+ E-mail all new members personally.

+ Answer any questions on the bboard as soon as they are posted.

+ Weekly bulletin board newsletter.

+ Have AIM chats with the members couple of weeks.

Any other suggestions or thoughts on this matter would be appreciated...

wingman

sounds like you are on the right track.

.... if you build it.... they will come.

People will eventually figure out the better place and decide for themselves. They may check out the competition, but if you can make your site better, offer them better content and more features that they like... then hopefully they'll come back.

Josh
www.joshuapettit.com
ThreadsDev.com Administrator | InfoPop Community Moderator
Register to see my How To/Site Help Library Forum at ThreadsDev.com.
My threads 'tweaking' abilities are for hire for upgrades, tweaks and modifications.

Definitely content and scheduled events can bring people back to your site over time. Lots of beginning communities use trivia games or other events that cause people to return to check for answers, etc., to draw members back.

Josh is right...ultimately all of the luring in the world can't make people leave a community they love. If you've built an atmosphere where they feel welcome, they'll come back. And remember that lots of people participate in multiple boards anyway, so you could easily have member overlap with another site, with no harm done to either.

content is king

------
Share the Passion: http://www.bigsoccer.com

You could also offer them email. We had a similar incident several years ago. I rebuilt our community as well. We had an "Ugly Stylesheet Contest" amongst the moderators. The members got to vote for the worst one. We had over 50,000 visits that month alone thanks to that contest.

I have since stopped any public display of emails, as well as not accepting any Yahoo, Excite, or Hotmail accounts. This cut back on the bogus registrations, and helped us cull out the troublemakers. If folks have to THINK about an email addy, then you will most likely NOT want them on your site. Those who use their REAL email addy are less prone to making trouble for you.

I also use Symantec's ISP tracker to see where the ISP hails from. Many times I can figure out a hacker before the attack begins. It takes diligence, and a crew of moderators to keep the place free of trouble. With a name like the Witches Realm - you can imagine!