I wanted to create a community where anyone could learn how to run and maintain an open-source php based online community. I was introduced to phpBB forums in the fall of 2002 where I used a fairly crappy free forum host with almost no advanced features...a year or so later, I discovered jconverv.net which gave me a full range of options, mods, plugins, templates to choose from, the works! My only problem: I didn't know how it worked, or how to improve the forum so it would stand out among the other hundreds and thousands of forums on the web.
Of course there was a Support Forum - which was mainly to get word of your site out to the jconverv community, and the technical support which slowly dwindled over the following few years - but there wasn't any single place I could go to learn more! I wanted to know how to code modifications, how to pull data from the database, create a style, and...the BIG question, "How do I get more members and more posts?"...
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The Ultimate Guide To Online Communities
