Designing a good forum

I googled quiet a lot but didn’t find any article on designing a good forum.So here is it for the first time.It will be very useful if you are a webmaster.

In forums, users develop a reputation over time.So do give them higher importance.This can be done by adding feature to vote user`s content,allowing user to rate each other and user ranking.More the user participates the more professional status he will acquire.This will result in totally user generated content.

The design of the forum plays a role in our decision to use it. After all, every forum has its own personality.

The diversity of content on forum is very important. Forum should offer unique content.This will help you to get more traffic from search engines.Also content should be well categorized. Forum needs good moderation and clear guidelines.

Once you have chosen a good forum software which suits your needs,customize it.Never use the default skin or theme packaged with your forum software.There are number of sites that offer a number of different themes and skins for your particular forum software.Use the best which will suit you as Your forum needs to stand out from the crowd.

Here is an example

Costa Rica Forum.

Costa Rica Forum is well designed forum,offering uniquie content.This forum is very great for traveler,as it provides information regarding hospitals,public services,transport,phone numbers,hotel,etc in Costa Rica directoey.Redsidents of Costa Rica can use it to post their articles on news, politics, technology, the Internet, business and many other things.It also provides free sms and fax service.It allows its users to blog in Costa Rica Blogs section.These extra services are crucial for a forum,as it removes the classical forum look of posting questions and answering those.