Here is the latest update from m current case study of Trip Boards having o do with the much anticipated and long awaited custom design. After several weeks and $600 in total cost (for both the design and the coding), we have the finished product in working order.

I have already received an amazing amount of feedback regarding the design and its uniqueness. The philosophy behind the design of Trip Boards and Cruise Line Forums is to stand out and be different. I no longer care much for a new forum that doesn’t do something different with their design.

Once again, I recommend that you budget for a nice design that will help add a bit of flare to your new community. I hope you enjoyed the latest update to the case study and our next updates will be along the lines of promotion. All feedback is appreciated!

We have just had our 1 month anniversary at Trip Boards and I am excited about the future. Here is an update of where we standL

1. Our site is indexed in the major search engines.
2. We are receiving a small amount of search engine traffic.
3. We finalized our forum organization with the Hot Spots.
4. We have our design being worked on.
5. We have 80 registered members.
6. We surpassed 5,000 posts and 1,000 threads.
7. We have 3 super moderators on staff.

I am pleased with the growth at this point and the content that is now in place. I will continue to keep you posted on progress and the changes being made.

It is now week 3 of the case study of Trip Boards and we have now passed 3,000 posts and have nearly 60 members. The search engine spiders have shown up from the Big 3 and we are beginning to get some pages indexed along with some search engine traffic. This case study update has to do with another critical step in a young forum’s early life, and that is building inbound links through directory submissions.

In our case, we have one of our volunteer Super Moderators that has offered to go and submit our site to directories. If you plan to do this yourself, I would set a goal to do between 5-10 directory submissions each day. You can find hundreds of free directories through Google or you can check out Digital Point’s Directories forum for hundreds more. If you have a budget in place for directory submissions, you can check this list of more than 200 paid directories to find the best fits for your new forum.

Building backlinks from reputable sites and directories is a must when starting out if you care at all about your long term SEO and rankings. While it can be tedious, don’t hesitate to delegate or simply pace yourself.

I always like to bring in a few staff members early on when starting a new forum. The thinking is not that there is a lot of moderating that needs to be done, but that it will help to grow and shape the community. I want to share a few of the benefits of bringing on committed staff members early on in your forum development.

1. You ensure a few active daily participants which is very much needed early on.
2. You have helpers and leadership of the community on the site at different times of the day.
3. The different personalities help to shape the face of the community which should be diverse.
4. You can delegate different jobs / tasks giving you needed help to generate more content and tools.

These are just a few of the reasons I think bringing on a few staff members will be a help to you. Building a community from scratch is something that would prove very difficult for you to do on your own and alone. Somewhere between 2-5 staff members is a good start in the early stages as to many can be counter productive.

At Trip Boards we brought on our first staff member yesterday and plan to bring on an additional staff member today.

Trip Boards is off to a great start! Here is what we have accomplished in our first 10 days of being open for business.

~ We have a basic header design in place until our custom style is completed.
~ We have a design contest soon to end on SitePoint.Com.
~ We have 38 registered users and have received our first bit of SE traffic and signups.
~ We have crossed over 1,500 posts.
~ I am currently brainstorming on the forum structure and how to organize what could be a massive amount of forums covering different locations across the globe.
~ We have implemented a few minor plugins and done a small amount of customization.

I am pleased with things so far, and am looking forward to getting the new style installed. I really AM NOT impressed with the quality of work being submitted on SitePoint’s contest thread. We will see how things end there.