Customer Reviews

Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards

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I had the opportunity to read through this book over the last week, and I'm just floored by how much good information it's got in it. This book is years of Patrick's experiences running successful forums (22 forums now, I believe!) and all the tips, tricks and wisdom he's picked up during those years. I ran a moderately successful forum years ago, and would have saved myself months of headache and heartache had I the information in this book at my fingertips back then.

The book is definitely opinionated - these are Patrick's recommendations based on his experiences, and it shows. His voice is natural, and the wording is down to earth. This isn't some theoretical treatise, but a 'from the trenches' view of what works, what doesn't, and why.

The book includes many sample forms which have example language to use for welcoming members to your forum, working with moderators, dealing with abusive or disruptive visitors, and much more. They're all available on the book's website too, so you don't need to retype it all in, but can quickly customize them to fit your own needs .

The one thing lacking in this book is that it doesn't go in to much detail about the major forum packages out there, so the reader who is just starting out will have to do some more research as to what packages have which features discussed in the book. Having said that, this keeps the focus of the book more on the human/people side of internet forums, and doesn't devolve in to a technical manual. I would have preferred a small feature comparison of the big forum systems out there, but I'm more of a technically-inclined person to begin with. If you're not technically inclined, you likely won't even notice the information not there.

Bottom line: if you're thinking of starting a web-based community, or have one and aren't sure how to manage it, this book is a must-have. It will save you weeks, if not months, of getting up to speed and being as effective as possible with your forums.

If you're considering to build your own online community or forum, then this is a must-read book. Patrick O'Keefe covers everything from how to start a forum to how to develop and police it. I particularly appreciated that much of this book covers managing people rather than technology. There are lots of other books on how to physically build a site, but this one goes into depth on how to build the actual community of the site. O'Keefe advices how to recruit new members to your site without spamming other sites, and also gives good advice on how to deal with difficult members by offering a lot of examples and how he handled it. You won't have to run a site to recognize some of the difficult types that he describes.

If you're going to start a forum or community site, or if you already have and you would like advice on how to manage the human side of running a site, then I recommend that you read this. If you're not, then I think you would still enjoy reading this. You'll find out how hard it is to run a site and you might appreciate those who do a little more.

Managing Online Forums is a great resource for both those starting out in the world of online forum management and seasoned veterans looking to improve and grow their online communities. The effectiveness of this book as a resource is founded upon three main strengths. The first of these is the author's experience and knowledge of the subject based upon years of administrating online forums. He knows what works and what doesn't. By tapping the author's knowledge, a forum manager can avoid wasting time and effort going in directions that are, ultimately, unfruitful. Instead, he can focus on only those things that are proven effective. Second, the book is organized in a logical sequence. It begins with suggestions on choosing a domain name and progresses through ideas on keeping an established forum interesting. Third, the book is effortless to read, avoiding technical jargon except when necessary. This effortlessness can transform into absorption, at times.

Ultimately, if you are interested in starting and running your own online community, Managing Online Forums is a great place to start. However, its usefulness does not end once a forum is up and running. As your community grows you will once again be able to reference the knowledge that exists in this book to further develop your community.

Disclaimer: Patrick has been a friend of mine for years. I even wrote the Forward for the book, so I know I'm biased. That being said, I still review the book honestly after having read it several times.

This was the first book I've ever read on managing forums or communities. With the whole web 2.0 culture moving more and more towards building up sites around communities this book was a welcome addition to my library of geeky books. Patrick gives plenty of high level advice to get you started thinking about how to manage your own community and then goes into the details of just how to do it. One of my favorite sections is the templates (which he offers as a download) for contacting people on your site for various reasons, like violating your TOS or other infractions. While Patrick primarily runs phpbb based forums, this book is for anyone who runs a community no matter what software you run. It's a great book on a very hot topic.

Written in a very accessible voice and tone, this book removes the intimidation element for anyone thinking of starting and managing a Forum. O'Keefe is smart enough to put the most urgent stuff first, so right from go, he makes it clear that he is not a programmer and yet has been able to successfully manage his own group of forums. Good news, because I'm not a programmer either but have considered creating a forum for fellow neo-luddites like myself. I don't think O'Keefe has left a single stone unturned with any of the subjects he brings up. For every option given, he presents plainly the warning points that must be considered. Specifically, the legal implications that you'll have to think about when you have people making advisory postings on your forum.

The chapter on promoting your forum is the highlight of this book and most of what he mentions is applicable to websites in general. He's deliberate in reminding his readers that he's never used paid advertising for his forum, but he doesn't discourage the option either. Without going into an SEO obsession, he gives very basic tips that, like I said, will be useful to any online content that one is considering publishing.

The writing style made it easy to breeze through this book. Just make sure you have a pen or highlighter with you.

Speaking as a community moderator on two of Patrick's websites I can personally say the tactics Patrick describes in this book work and work efficiently. Whether it's merely getting things started or handling the most outrageous violations every aspect of a community is covered in the book.

It's great for beginners and the advanced as Patrick's experience spans over several communities and years, the book is after all based on battle tested tips.

Whether or not you run your website exactly like prescribed in the book isn't a problem, as that what it doesn't try to do. The book opens your eyes on the many different ways you can run each aspect of your community, good or bad. "Managing Online Forums" is a must read for any new community administrator, or even a veteran looking for a refreshing view on community management!

My guess is that experienced community discussion board managers will skim this book to check out its scope, then focus on particular sections which address their immediate needs, and those just setting up a community will likely focus on the earlier chapters first and perhaps make use of the excellent templates provided for community discussion board owners.

A summary of this review is:

* the book incorporates a huge amount of information and speaks at every turn of the author's practical experience, over many years, in setting up and managing online communities

* it should prove an invaluable resource for anyone who is considering setting up an online forum or already managing one or more

* there are templates included, for guidelines and contact, which can be used and adapted freely

* advice on community software is restricted to vBulletin and phpBB but the principles and practices set out in the book can be applied more widely.

My frame of reference for the purposes of this review is as a participant in online forums for fifteen or more years, going back to the days when The WELL (which had started in the 1980s) was still pretty prominent and Compuserve Forums. I have also been and in some cases still am a member of various Listservs, Ryze groups, Ning groups, Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups, some of which have been run well to brilliantly, some of which have verged on or tipped over into anarchy. I am also founding moderator of the now 900 or so member forum, LinkedIn Bloggers.

My personal preference (bias if you will) is for groups to be well run and the discussion managed in a kind of "loose-tight" way that means you can spend your time online enjoyably and/or usefully and don't have to put up with nonsense and spamming.

From reading Managing Online Forums, I get the sense that the author too has a low level of tolerance for nonsense or spamming.

Managing Online Forums has a very readable, conversational style, which I found congenial. It would perhaps have been easier for the author to write more of a "shopping list" of things to do and not do, but I for one would probably have found such an approach not only boring to read but less than convincing. With Managing Online Forums I felt I was in the presence of a master, who had not only "been there, done that" but had reflected long and deeply on what works and what doesn't.

The sub-title promises that the book will provide Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards. I found that to be a somewhat over-ambitious claim - perhaps a bit of publisher hubris: the author himself makes it clear that some aspects won't be covered, for example technical issues.

Nor does the book have specific advice with regard to other popular platforms as Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups or MSN Groups - as is acknowledged also on page 2. There are huge numbers of forums on these and other platforms and it is inevitable that people managing communities on them will be looking for guidance, the specifics of which they will not find here. To provide one small example, as co-moderator of a group on Yahoo! Groups and requiring a specific identification detail for new members, I and my fellow moderators have found the interface for joining totally inadequate, with the result that we have to go to considerable effort to help people join. Information on this sort of dilemma is not to be found in Managing Online Forums.

Although, as mentioned above, the principles and practices in the book can be applied to these and other platforms.

Two chapters which I found particularly interesting, from a forum founder or moderator viewpoint, were those on guidelines (Chapter 3) and on "Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos" (Chapter 6). As an aside, from reading these chapters it does appear that Patrick O'Keefe as a forum manager has had more than his fair share of difficulty-creating people to deal with.

Complementing these chapters on guidelines and "dealing with chaos" is the set of general guideline and contact templates in Appendix B: Blank General Templates. I would love to have had these templates a few years ago when LinkedIn Bloggers was just getting going - and am looking now at what can be gleaned from them. Having guidelines in place and known to members makes it a much more straightforward task to deal with behavior that does not serve the community. I know it's a bit of a cliched expression, but the fact is that this set of templates alone is worth the price of the book and more - much more.

My main takeaway from reading Managing Online Forums was not so much about the mechanics of setting up or managing a community, but more about personality traits and character-building. It was pretty clear to me that if you are going to be a successful forum manager/community builder for the long haul, you'll need a blend of thick skin, sense of humor, respect for others, a sense of order and a determination to apply the rules firmly and fairly, without fear or favor. There is an excellent section on this, under the heading "What Skills and Characteristics Do You Need to Have?" at pages 14-16 in Chapter 1, Laying the Groundwork.

Overall, it is evident that Patrick knows his stuff: he has been building online communities for years and it shows. Anyone who wants to set up an online forum or already has one can learn from this book. Anyone who wants to know how to build a community online, can find plenty of guidance here. If you want to know how to deal effectively with troublemakers and wreckers, you may need some trial and error but there is a ton of practical advice here. If you want to know how to manage and lead staff (paid or volunteer), it's in the book.

Why do Yankee fans flock to their favorite online community, YanksBlog? Perhaps, it's because they feel welcomed and supported, as you would want to be at the site for your passionate interest. Patrick O'Keefe is a gracious and savvy host for this avid baseball fans. He manages several communities including PhotoshopForums, KarateForums and BadBoyForums.

Like Augie Ray, he can help you decide whether to join or build a community.Now, would you like to launch and manage a lively online forum for people who share your favorite interest? And perhaps make money? Or become more adept at most any type of social interaction online? Then listen in as O'Keefe, the author of Managing Online Forums, describes how to jumpstart and care for a lively, growing community online.

*Work from anywhere.

* Host a popular place for people who share your interest to gather.

From mothering to scuba diving, managers of some of the largest online forums rave about O'Keefe's advice. Hear how powerful a community can become, ways to set up a community and a content site, mediate squabbling members, develop guidelines and promote your community.

As you can tell I am a fan of this generous community-building expert and his book. As both O'Keefe and Peter Block suggest, what makes communities work online is the same as in face-to-face time - -it is the sense of belonging.

As many online forums as there are, sadly there are only very few titles out there that deal with the topic. Until now, the best one (now out of print) was Design for Community. But Patrick O'Keefe has changed this for good with this amazingly comprehensive title that is packed with great (and fairly timeless) advice about how to start, develop, promote and manage your online community. Two chapters at the end deal with tips on how to keep your online forum interesting and how to monetize it.

Personally, the only downside I found in the book is that it has a very heavy emphasis on forums (phpBB, more specifically), leaving outside some of the aspects specific to social media. However, the knowledge that the author has included in here can be relatively easily ported to help folk wanting to manage social networks or other social applications.

As for me, I am getting a copy of the book for each of the Administrators in my communities.

I currently own and co-owned several forums now or in the past. This book is an absolute must read. Whether you are a seasoned forum owner or thinking about staring a forum this book is for you.

This book is an easy follow along guide on how to get your forum stated, from choosing a topic along with a domain name, to setting up a forum without getting to technical. From there it moves on to how to manage and deal with difficult members as well as choosing and managing your staff and much more.

The author uses his real life experiences that he has dealt with now and in the past and gives plenty of examples from developing his forum guidelines, to examples of dealing with those difficult members and how you should manage your staff. These real life examples include e-mails that he uses when there has been a forum violation or dealing with an absent staff member. All are there for you do read and implement them on your own forum.

I could go on and on about this book, but I am telling right now this is a must read and I will be pulling off my shelf from time to time.