Forums are an excellent addition to a website to attract visitors to interact with the site and to return to the website freqeuently. While there are many other website additions that can retain visitors and have them coming back for more, forums are perhaps the most engaging for visitors to your website and offer the most benefits to both the website’s owner and the visitor.

Unfortunately, having a forum addition to a website does not guarantee its success and usefulness in gathering the hypothesized attention and attractiveness. A new forum with no content, no members or no active discussion is like an empty hall. Anyone who steps into such an empty room would most definitely get the creeps and run away as fast as they can. Similarly, your forum can quickly lose its purported usefulness if it is empty and bare.

Starting and building an active forum on your website is no mean feat. It requires a lot of time, patience, and hard-work. Why is that so? Well, there are several important factors that scares away visitors and you have to remove these factors in order to convince visitors to stay, read, and then post and join in the discussions. If there are no discussions in the first place, no one would be around to discuss! It is exactly a chicken and egg question that you have to answer. There are several methods to overcome these issues and to get content/discussions started on your forum.

Having good content draws visitors to read and if they have questions or concerns, they can always find a link to discuss it on your forum. Make sure you provide them a link and the outlet to voice out on your forums. The hard part is in writing quality content on your site.

Some forums offer active members special advertising opportunities such as banners or text links on the website and in the forums. Members are then encouraged to start threads and post and participate in order to obtain free advertising. Other than free advertising, you might want to consider giving away a free copy of your product to the top poster or hold a lucky draw for active posters. Nothing beats promotion than free products and competition. On my webmaster community (www.buildtolearn.com), I provide free cpanel web hosting for members who have accumulated 50 posts. This incentive has been in use for the past 2 years and our community now has close to 10,000 members!

There are many other new forums started on the net everyday and you could work together with other websites to generate content on your forums. It is a ‘I’ll post in yours and you post in mine’ exchange where both webmasters participate in each others forums in order to get the ball rolling in the forums. This exchange makes it more interesting for both parties.

If you have deep pockets or have a budget from your website, you can always get people to come to your forum and start discussions. Quality checks are in order to ensure that your ‘free-lance posters’ are not simply submitting 3 word posts or copying posts from other forums.

If all else fails, due to low budget or having nothing else to offer, you can create ‘virtual copies’ of yourself and start discussions with yourself. To new visitors to your forum, they see an active community and discussions, which helps them overcome the inertia. Once you have a handful of active members talking, you can stop talking to yourself and let your community grow itself!

The above are just some tips that I have gathered from participating in forums and from building forum communities on the net for the past 2 years. The tough part in setting up a forum is in the initial stage. Once you have overcome that hurdle, it gets easier for the forum to grow and mature.

Dax Christopher maintains a two year old webmaster community at http://www.Buildtolearn.com, a forum community that discusses web-hosting and webmaster related issues such as web-design, page coding, SEO and many others. Visit BuildtoLearn.com to learn more about developing and growing large communities.

Once a visitor gets to your web site, you want to make sure they can find what they are looking for quickly and easily, or they will just go elsewhere. If a web site is easy to use and understand, visitors will come back time and time again.

Using intuitive navigation techniques will greatly improve the usability of your web site, and therefore user satisfaction and return rates. By intuitive navigation, I mean some sort of menu, map or list that is instantly understandable to most visitors to your web site.

One of the first points to making a site easy to navigate is to have a consistent menu that is on every page. By having a menu that is on every page of your site, users can move from each section from any other section, with out having to go back to a home page or menu page.

Keeping the menu in the same location, and in the same style throughout your site ensures that visitors quickly recognize how to navigate your site. If you have a different style menu on every page, users may get confused and not as easily comprehend how to navigate your site.

Another useful tool a Webmaster can include for visitors is a site map. A site map is a page containing an organized list of all the pages or sections of the site. Instead of moving through the site’s menu system and down through categories by clicking on links on different pages, a visitor has the option of going to the site map and clicking directly to the page they are seeking.

Though there are many fancy buttons, graphics and rollovers that can be used for your navigation menu, sometimes simple text links are the best bet. For one, text link navigation menus are fast loading. Many web surfers are on slow connections and do not want to wait for a complex navigation system to download. Text navigation menus also can add relevant text to search engine results, whereas image navigation bars cannot. Text navigation also helps ensure your users understand what the links mean.

If you do opt to use graphic navigation menus, you may wish to consider adding a redundant text navigation menu at the bottom of the page to ensure viewability and search engine spidering.

Many new Webmasters are tempted to use frames to create a navigation menu that will appear on all the site’s pages. The benefit is that the navigation will stay in sight even when the rest of the page is scrolled. But because frames piece pages together from other pages a Webmaster cannot be sure that a web page using frames will be viewed correctly. If a visitor comes to a page through a search engine that was designed to have a navigation menu added with a frame, the user will see not see the menu. Because of this, it is important to add a link to your home page on every page, so viewers can see your site as it was intended.

Even if you are not using frames, it would be helpful to have a link to the home page of your website on every page, to ensure users can find the “beginning” of your site.

Keeping the navigation menu near the top of the web pages ensures that surfers will be able to see the menu as soon as the page loads. If a user has to scroll to navigate to other pages of your site, they will be less inclined to do so.

In closing, it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to site navigation, simplicity is key. If a user does not immediately see what they need, they will not spend much time trying to find it, but will rather move on to the next site.

Halstatt Pires is an Internet marketing consultant with http://www.marketingtitan.com – an Internet marketing firm in San Diego offering automated web site systems through http://www.businesscreatorpro.com.

Web forms allow site owners to gather information about their site visitors. Web forms can be as simple as an email newsletter subscription box, or as complex as an advanced ecommerce checkout page. Here are some tips on making the most of your web forms.

Not All Web Forms Are Created Equal

Some web forms are extremely basic and only email forms to administrators. Others are integrated into databases and lead management software. Here is some thing to look for when choosing web form software.

Targeted Lead Generation

Web forms allow site owners to gather valuable information, including contact information, referral web site URLs, search engine keywords and visitor comments, and more. The results of these web forms can be posted to a database and emailed to administrators. Respondents to web forms could be buying a product or interested in receiving more information. The leads generated in this manner are highly targeted since the people filling out the request form will have seen your site and know the purpose of your company.

Keyword and Referral Tracking

If you use search engine marketing to promote your web site, tracking keywords from search to sale can greatly increase your ability to focus on the keywords that work. When a person navigates from one page to another, tracking software can carry certain data along. The carried data can include keywords and the referral web site URL. This data is then recorded on the order form or an information request form so that web site managers can determine which keywords and site are sending the most conversions. This allows marketing efforts to be directed to what’s working.

Self-Populating Database

Instead of buying a database of leads, or having telemarketers working to create lead databases, web forms allow site owners to have the prospects themselves populate a business database. In this manner, an entire database can be filled with people specifically interested in the company hosting the web form.

Email Marketing

Email marketing allows site owners to keep their companies in front of targeted audiences. Email newsletters can add value to web sites, providing a precious resource to site visitors. Informative newsletters allow site owners to send advertisements to highly targeted recipients that have opted-into the list. Newsletters can be sent at any interval, including daily, weekly monthly or yearly. By providing informative articles and/or discounts and special offers, many visitors to your site will be happy to opt-in to your mailing list. Sending email to mass amounts of people that have not requested information from you is generally regarded as spam and should be avoided.

Auto Responders

Web forms can allow automated responses to be sent, taking some work out of lead follow up. For example, if a product is likely to be used in 30 days, an auto responder can be sent to send a discount or reminder to the purchaser of the product 25 days from initial delivery.

Conclusion

Web forms are powerful tools for almost any business web site. Before investing in a web form solution, check your options and find a solution with all the features you want. Using advanced web forms can dramatically increase your marketing feedback and sales.

About The Author

Halstatt Pires is an Internet marketing consultant with http://www.marketingtitan.com – an Internet marketing firm in San Diego offering automated web site systems through http://www.businesscreatorpro.com.

So you have finally arrived at a stage where you to need to choose a web host to run your PHP & MySQL supported website. This means your website is dynamic, that is, it changes according to the feedback from your visitors or the data your MySQL database contains.

You may need PHP features in your web hosting for the following reasons:

Although there are numerous CGI scripts available (and many hosts provide these scripts for free), if you can, it is preferable to get your own script written to meet your specific requirements. The cgi scripts available at your web host are very generic in nature. If you have your own PHP script to handle your form, you can generate your own response when a visitor submits your form.

There are great many JavaScripts that can help you validate your forms, but these days many surfers prefer to disable scripts for the fearing on getting infected with worms and viruses. php script on the other hand a server-side script and nobody can stop them from running as long as the browser is loading the web page.

You can also send a customized “thank you” message to whoever submits the form. After sending the “thank you” message and emailing the form details to you, your customized php script can also save the submitted information in a php database.

[o] MANAGE PRODUCT CATALOGS WITH php & MySql DATABASE

You may like to generate your pages dynamically using data in your MySQL database. For example, if you want to maintain a catalog of 150 different wine bags, it would be arduous to maintain the details manually. Instead you can put information like price, shape, color, picture path, etc. in a database and then write a php page that, let us say, shows 10 wine bags at a time. The visitor thinks she’s visited 15 pages, but there is only one dynamic page that is sequentially showing the products.

Additionally, if you want your visitors to be able to conduct searches (just red wine bags) you can upload a php script to your web host that shows only the wine bags that satisfy the search criteria.

[o] PUBLISH A BLOG

You may need a PHP/MySQL web host if you are planning to publish a regular blog.

Most blogging software these days, such as MovableType and WordPress use php and MySql to generate dynamic content. In fact, WordPress has been purely written using PHP and MySql so that people well-versed with the php programming language can make their own changes.

[o] MANAGE AN E-COMMERCE WEBSITE

Choosing a php / MySql web host is a great way to go if you want to run an e-commerce website. E-commerce websites indisputably need dynamic capabilities such as updatable shopping carts and inventory management systems that can be developed using php and MySql.

As they say, when it comes to imagination and innovation, the sky is the limited. A PHP/MySQL web host empowers you to create as many web-enabled capabilities as you can think of.

ADVANTAGES OF CHOOSING A php / MySql WEB HOST

Advantages of opting for php & MySql web hosting are:
1. php websites, since they are run on Linux and Unix, are considered more secure compared to Windows supported languages such as ASP and .NET.
2. Lots of free php source code is available on the Internet. There are hundreds of forums that readily provide you assistance while you learn and develop websites in php.
3. Both php and MySql are free from License fees.
4. php & MySql web hosting is much cheaper than Windows supported hosting
5. Applications written in php are sturdier and easily scalable to various web hosting environments. Notably, php scripts can be run on Windows hosting but ASP and .NET apps do not work on Linux and Unix.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of this web hosting website. For details of this article, please go to PHP /MSQL Web Hosting

Every website needs a great web host, however when you are looking online for a host you may be overwhelmed with the wide variety available ranging from absolutely free to relatively expensive. How do you know what you need and what is the best choice? The answer to this depends on your business and whether you will have a lot of business or none at all, however you always want to have more space than you think you will need as well as the following options for a great web host.

When choosing a web hosting company you definitely want to make sure that they have 24/7 support. The reason for this is if you have a problem with your website, you need to be able to talk to someone and have them fix it immediately. As long as the host offers this type of support it should not be a problem. If they don’t, you might wait several days with your website down and not be able to contact anyone. Think of the customers you will be missing and all of the lost sales you’ll suffer.

You want to make sure your web host offers a generous amount of bandwidth in order to support your website and ensure it loads as quickly as possible. The more bandwidth means the more information that is carried and the quicker your page opens. So, make sure you have a web host with plenty of bandwidth to support your site.

Regardless of whether you need it now or not you want a web host that offers plenty of storage space in case you do need it. Give yourself some growing room.

When you have a web host as well as URL you will also want to have your own e-mail that ties into your company name. Find a web host that offers this as well. Most do, but some might trick you with fine print so be careful.

You may only have one domain name today, but the future holds all kinds of possibilities. Be sure you can add additional domain names if you need to.

If you have a domain name, but do not have your own name server then you will certainly want a web host that will allow you to store or “park” your domain name on their server for your domain to remain valid for an extended period of time.

While you have found a web host that meets all of your needs, be sure you also have a tool box that will help you manage your site easily and whenever you want. This is really important for you to be able to do, especially if you need to change something like prices, or other important information.

About the Author

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/