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The next feature I have offered to this community was a possibility to suggest new features for the community and vote on them! And this was a real WOW! The first 5 features were suggested by me. I had my own internal rating for what, I thought, would be good. As the members started to vote, I realized I was wrong again and again. And when I began implementing features according to the community's rating, they all were a full success from the beginning. Accepted, loved and used from the first day. How do I evaluate ideas from the community? I used a simple database. Each idea had a title and a description, nothing more. Users give thumbs up or thumbs down. Quick and easy, like the screenshot below. The members had the following opportunities: Ability to add new ideas Ability to discuss new ideas (linked to forum) Ability to quick vote (with Yes/No) Ability to see the total number of votes and the breakdown of Yes/No votes The ideas are sorted by their total rating. Every member can see how many users have voted, the breakdown and total rating. By the way, my template is just a modified version of SuperVote template. I was surprised to see the results. My favorite ideas were not interesting to the members, instead they started to suggest their own. What benefits does the community-driven idea system have? As an admin, you never see your community the way a member does. This is pretty normal. The idea system helps you to see the community through member's eyes. You know that they really need. You can see how many of them need something (number of votes). After implementing, you can move the idea to the done section, showing you hear them. You do not waste your time on features they will never use. You can even use it as a to-do list to prioritize the new features. It has been a wonderful learning experience. This approach led to immediate success, as it reflects the community's true desires. The benefits were clear: better insight into community needs, and an increased sense of belonging. I involved my community in the decision-making process, listened to their feedback, and prioritized their suggestions. As simple as this. Now, it's your turn. Have you tried involving your community in new features “development”? What strategies work for you? Do you have a forum, where they can suggest? How do you prioritize the ideas? Do you probably stick to 3rd-party solutions like canny.io? Share your experiences and ideas in the discussion.

How to check emails from your community Step 1: Are my emails blacklisted? The first step is to check if your community domain is blacklisted. I use MX toolbox. This free tool shows a long list of popular blacklists. Ideally, your domain in not found on any blacklist. If your domain blacklisted on one or several lists, the next step is to check, how healthy are emails that your community sends out. Step 2: Are my emails healthy? There is an easy tool to check emails that your community sends out. Allow me to introduce: Mail Tester. This tool is easy to use. You can perform 3 tests for free within 24 hours. Every community owner should use the tool to check how healthy their outgoing mails are. Open a mail-tester.com. Copy an email address, you see in the first field. Open your community and register as a new user with an email address from step 2. Return to mail-tester.com and press “Then check your score”. See the results. Your goal is to score 10 out of 10. If you get 10 points, you're fine. Nothing to see or to read here; have a nice day. Everything below 10 should be investigated. And if you don't get any results, you are in real trouble! This means your emails are not being delivered at all. Probably, the server you're sending from is blacklisted, or your email configuration is corrupt. What should you care about? There are seven terms you have to understand about your email configuration. 1. Sender domain (envelope sender) When your community sends an email, there are two important addresses involved: Header “From”. The address the recipient sees. This is the email address that shows up in their inbox as the sender. For example, contact@yourcommunity.com. Always use the domain of your community to send out emails. Avoid using other domains like yourcommunity@gmail.com. Envelope Sender. The address the recipient does not see. This is the technical address used by email servers to deliver the message. For example, MAIL FROM:<admin@yourcommunity.com>. This email address can be different from those, that the recipient sees in “From”. The second email address is used when email cannot be delivered. Example: Header From: contact@yourcommunity.com (This is what your members sees when they receive emails from your community) Envelope Sender: admin@yourcommunity.com. If the email can’t be delivered, the bounce message will come back to admin@yourcommunity.com. The header From can be faked! Everybody can use contact@yourcommunity.com in the header “From”. Their real email address is found in envelope sender. By checking the envelope sender, email systems can detect and block fake emails that might be trying to scam users. The From address is normally set in your community. Envelope sender is set in SMTP configuration. 2. SMTP or not SMTP? When your community sends out an email, it connects to an SMTP server (mail server). The SMTP server takes the email and finds the recipient's email server. The recipient’s server receives the email and stores it in their inbox until they check their emails. If the configuration of the outgoing emails in your community does not have SMTP settings, then your emails are probably sent out direct from the community server (not mail server). This sending method has multiple disadvantages: It can be less reliable and might not always deliver emails successfully. Lacks built-in security features, making it more susceptible to abuse. Emails sent without SMTP are more likely to end up in spam folders due to lack of proper authentication. It is more secure to use SMTP server for sending emails. This will significantly improve your email score. Amazon SES is one of the cheapest email services available. Using Amazon SES, I send out over 2,000 emails daily at a cost of below 3 USD per month(!). However, configuring SES can be very tricky and requires strong technical understanding. There are numerous other providers like MailChimp, SparkPost, SendGrid and so on. All of them are pretty simple to configure, but require more budget. 3. SPF - who is allowed? SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. This system is used to prevent email fraud by verifying that an email is sent from a legitimate source. When your community sends an email, the recipient's email server checks the SPF record for your domain. This is a way to verify if your email server is authorized to send emails for your community domain. Example: you send an email from contact@yourcommunity.com using MailChimp. The recipient’s email server receives the email and checks the SPF record for MailChimp server (usually IP). It sees that MailChimp is authorized to send emails for yourcommunity.com. Check if your community domain has an SPF record here. SPF record is set in the DNS settings of your domain. It is a plain TXT record that only you can add. Nobody else can do it for you, unless you host your community in the cloud. Then you have to ask your cloud provider. SPF record is important, but not enough. The scammer can use the same email provider or share IP with your community. Then SPF record would allow the scammer to send emails on your behalf. 4. DKIM - this is really me DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail. It is a security feature used to make sure that an email really comes from your community. It cannot be tampered. When you send an email, your email provider adds a special digital “signature” to the email. Think of this like a unique key. This key can be generated on your server only. Special secret instructions are required to generate it. Nobody else can do it without access to your server. When the recipient's email provider gets the email, it checks the key (digital signature) to make sure it’s valid. It does this by comparing the key to a “lock” of your community domain. This “lock” is publicly available. If the key matches the lock, the recipient's server knows the email is really from your community. Check if your community domain has an DKIM record here. DKIM is a plain TXT entry on your domain. It is added to the DNS settings of your domain. Only you can add it. Nobody else can do it for you, unless you host your community in the cloud. Then you have to ask your cloud provider. 5. DMARC - rules if checks fail DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. DMARC allows you to set rules for how emails from your community should be handled if they fail SPF or DKIM checks. There are three rules that you can apply to the emails that do not pass the checks: none: No specific action is taken. Recipient's email server can choose what to do. quarantine: Those emails should be placed in the recipient's spam folder. reject: Those emails should be rejected and not delivered to the recipient's inbox. Reject is the best option, if you have set SPF, DKIM and sender envelope proper and without issues. Check if your community domain has an DMARC record here. DMARC is a TXT entry on your domain. It is added to the DNS settings of your domain. Only you can add it. Nobody else can do it for you, unless you host your community in the cloud. Then you have to ask your cloud provider. 6. Bounced emails Even if your email is configured with a score 10/10 according to mail-tester.com, it does not mean it is 100% healthy. The real score will also depend on how many emails you send that bounce. Bounced emails are those that could not be delivered to your recipients. It can be that the recipient's email is abandoned, the inbox is full, or the recipient's server rejects emails from your community for some reason. For example, Amazon SES allows 10% of sent emails to bounce. It means, your community can send to 100 email addresses where 10 are invalid before your account is in trouble. The handling of bounced emails involves stopping sending emails to invalid addresses. This is a rare feature community offer out of the box. Normally, your community will continue to send out notifications about new topics, reactions, PMs and so on. The more emails to invalid addresses you send, the worse the reputation of your community email address. The simplest solution is to monitor MAILER FAILURE responses and subsequently unsubscribe users who have invalid addresses. 7. Spam complaints These are reports from the users that mark emails from your community as spam in their inbox. This harms your reputation much more than bounced emails. For example, Amazon SES allows 0.5% of sent emails to be marked as spam. Other email providers (free and paid) rely on this statistic. If many users mark your community email as spam, one day the email provider starts to mark them as spam per default in other inboxes. The solution is to include a good, visible Unsubscribe link in each email sent from your community. Manually unsubscribe users who mark the emails from your community as spam. To know who has marked your emails as spam, use a DMARC record on your domain. Here you can add an email address for the abuse reports from the email providers. Healthy emails are not only important for the registration, but also for sending out newsletter. Email marketing is an underrated opportunity often missed by community owners. Have you performed any checks on your e-mail? How good is your reputation? How do you handle bounce and spam complaints? Share your experiences and ideas in the discussion.

Here's my “essential list” for creating or refreshing a community's branding with minimal effort. These tips apply to both new and existing communities. Discover some helpful free tools in this article that you might not aware of. 1. Community Logo When building or revamping a community or forum, my first step is always creating a logo. It sets the tone for the primary color and overall style, including the color palette and fonts. If, like me, you're not a designer, opt for a horizontal logo. This is the main reason why I mostly use Looka instead of Canva. A square logo can cause issues, requiring more space in the website header and pushing the main content area down. Remember, it is all about content and communication, not about the logo. Don't force members to scroll to see the essential part; they come to communicate and not to watch a giant header. ;) The recommended logo size for a community is something around 450 × 90 px. This size fits well in desktop header and on mobile. When looking at logos, view them in small sizes; don't open big previews. Can you see and read every letter at a small size? If it's barely readable, choose another one. We live in a mobile world, where small displays don't leave room for anything else but a clear image and a short name beside it. No slogans. No additional lines. If you need branded covers for your social media, Looka can create complete social branding for your community with some clicks. Using logo in emails I rarely use logos in outgoing emails. Why? Because most users won't see them, as email clients do not display images per default. It ends up looking like a broken image until they agree to display it. But that's up to you. Primary color and palette Now, with your logo chosen, you already have a primary color. I typically input the primary color into ColorSpace to get suggestions for different color palettes. Here's an example based on the primary color #002264. ColorSpace offers 10+ different suggested palettes, without using a color wheel. Personally, I've never found color wheels very usable. Next, apply the colors to preview them on the “real” site. Some colors might look great on the palette, but not so great when applied to the website. I play with Realtime Colors to test different palettes and also to play with different fonts. Fonts If you're fond of custom fonts, experiment with them on the "real" site. There is also a randomizer to get an idea of how a page might look like with different fonts. If font is really that important? Not at all. But it can create different emotions. This example shows how different fonts produces different emotions. For the body, the font size should be 14 px or greater. Using a smaller font size might risk triggering a Google warning like shown below. 2. Favicon A favicon is a small image that appears on the browser tab on the desktops and also used for shortcuts on mobile home screens. I typically create a 512 × 512 px image for favicon. The simplest approach is to separate the image from the logo and use it as a favicon. If the logo image has too many details, you can use the first letter of your community name. You do not have an idea, what it will look like? RealFaviconGenerator provides a perfect preview for all scenarios. Simply upload your image and preview how it will appear in the browser and on different devices (Android, iOS). Adjust colors and text to see how well it fits. Ready? Download the folder to your PC, and you'll have all the icons in all the sizes. 3. Share image This image is used if someone shares a link to your community on social media. It's not just for Facebook—it's also used on WhatsApp, Telegram, X, LinkedIn, Discord, and more. Do you have a share image? I wonder how many communities miss this opportunity to promote themselves. What does it look like? You can test any link from your community with OpenGraph. OpenGraph generate a preview for Facebook, X (formely Twitter), LinkedIn and Discord. Tip: Consider adding a Call-To-Action “button” to your share image: "Learn more" or "Join now" are just some examples. This is where effortless promotion begins. In OpenGraph you will also find numerous inspirations for your share image. The recommended size for share images is 1200 × 630 px. 4. Default avatar image Last but not least, the default avatar for your members. Nobody wants to be a gray silhouette, right? Why not give them an initial avatar that reflects your target audience? Use symbols that describe what they aspire to be when they join your community. A beautiful girl? A strong man? A professional designer? A power coder? A singing star? To put it together: logo, favicon, share image, default avatar image. And you are ready to start. Was it helpful? What tools do you use to create graphics for your community? Share your experiences and ideas in the discussion.

1. Email Verification Email verification at the main gate ensures that only those with legitimate credentials (valid email addresses) are allowed to enter. It requires users to verify their email addresses before they can participate. Right after registration, the user gets a confirmation email to his inbox with a confirmation link. If he clicks on the link, it is verified. This step helps filter out spammers using fake emails. If they never confirm their email address, they will not be able to participate. This approach should be used in every community. Even if you additionally require a manual verification by admin, you can save time omitting reviews of accounts with unconfirmed mails. However, this is only half the truth. There are plenty of services that offer so-called disposable email addresses. 2. No disposable emails A disposable email address (DEA) is a temporary email address that users can create and use for a short period or a specific purpose. Spammers typically generate a new disposable address, use it to sign up for your community, confirm the registration, and then discard the email. Many services offer instant generation of these addresses. Examples of disposable email services Mailinator: Provides public, disposable email inboxes. 10 Minute Mail: Offers email addresses that expire after 10 minutes. Temp Mail: Generates anonymous, temporary email addresses for short-term use. How to check if email is disposable? I use some free tools like ZeroBounce to check and ban questionable emails: I prefer the best (primary) email address of the user. On my part, I do everything to protect my users from spam, ensuring my outgoing emails cannot be spoofed in any way. Some community engines like Invision Community already have a built-in checker for disposable emails. However, their database is not perfect. It does not recognize all disposable emails and lets some through as valid addresses. That's why I still use the tool above if in doubt. 3. Review and approve new members manually The safest way to manage new members is to manually review and approve each application. It’s like closing your castle gate, letting people wait outside until everyone’s identity is checked. This approach can effectively control spam, but it also has several disadvantages: Time-Consuming: Reviewing each application individually takes significant time. You have to do it regularly, regardless of the time of day or vacations. Scalability Issues: As the community grows, the volume of applications can become overwhelming. Reviewing five applications is feasible, but what about 50 or 100? Do you have enough time to manage this alongside community growth? Delayed Engagement: New users cannot engage with the community immediately. This can reduce their initial enthusiasm and overall engagement. If I join a community, I am ready to participate, for example, by asking questions now. If I am not able to, I will probably find another way to solve my problem. A delayed approval might make me lose interest. Certainly, there are some community models where this approach makes sense. For me, delayed engagement and user frustration are the biggest pain points with this approach. 4. The most spammers are not human: CAPTCHA? Nowadays, the most spammers are not human. They are bots, programs that scan the internet for opportunities to add user-generated content with their spam. They do not aim at you personally or target your community specifically. They do it fully automatically. To prevent bots from registering in your community, you can use CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart”. This security measure differentiates bots from humans, typically with an image or audio challenge. This technique has been developed 25 years ago and consistently improved. In my opinion, while it is getting more complicated for the humans to get through the challenges, bots learn to break them faster. I do not use it. As an administrator and community manager, I have no control, who has been blocked. The more inexperienced the users, the higher the chance they will not bypass the challenge, but well-developed spambots will. While CAPTCHA offers a rudimentary protection from spam registration, you cannot rely on it entirely. It also will not stop manual spam or spam coming from CAPTCHA farms. 5. Spammer database and anti-spam services There are anti-spam service that provide protection for forums and online communities by using history of spam activity. When a user interacts with a website protected by such a service (e.g., submits a registration form or posts a comment), the data is sent to their servers for analysis. IP Address: Checks if the IP address is blacklisted or has a history of spam activity. Email Address: Verifies the email address against a database of known spammers. They also learn from the decisions by analyzing feedback from site administrators. If you mark a user as a spammer, the feedback goes back to the service. The next registration will be blocked due to the history of spam activity. Especially for communities, there is a service called CleanTalk. CleanTalk starts at $8.00 per website per year and offers a free 7-days trial with no obligation. This is a powerful solution as it combines the efforts of all CleanTalk users. The best part is, the logs show you exactly who, why and with what content has been blocked. No black box like CAPTCHA. You get weekly stats via email if you like. To integrate CleanTalk in your forum or community, you can use ready-made plugins. It is worth testing it for 7 days for free to decide whether it is helpful or not. This is how the configuration area for CleanTalk looks like in Invision Community. 6. Blacklists and Whitelists Some community engines allow you to set blacklists for IPs, email domains, and even geographical regions. If you encounter a lot of spam from certain countries and do not target users from those areas, you can try to exclude registrations from these countries. However, blocking by IP can be very problematic for several reasons: Dynamic IP Addresses: Many internet service providers (ISPs) assign dynamic IP addresses to their users. This means that a legitimate user might be assigned an IP address previously used by a spammer, leading to false positives and blocking innocent users. Shared IP Addresses: In many cases, multiple users share a single IP address, especially in corporate environments, universities, or public Wi-Fi networks. Blocking an IP address could inadvertently block a large group of legitimate users. Temporary Effectiveness: Blocking an IP address only temporarily stops spammers. They can easily switch to new IP addresses, making this approach a cat-and-mouse game with limited long-term effectiveness. Limited Scalability: Managing and maintaining an IP blacklist can become a cumbersome task, especially as the community grows. Collateral Damage: There is a high risk of collateral damage when blocking IP addresses. Legitimate users can be unfairly punished, leading to frustration and loss of trust in your community. I never rely on IP only and use a combination of several methods. 7. Filters, restrictions, and reports There is no way to protect your community 100% from spam registration. Therefore, you have to set up another level (the inner wall) for those who are already in. There are some automatic measures, such as: Content Filters. These filters automatically block content containing specific spam-related words, phrases, or links. New Member Restrictions: Newcomers can be given limited access until they prove their good intentions. For example, you can moderate the first post of every newly registered user. Personally, I do not like the idea, as this decreases the engagement. If I post now, I would like to have an answer or reaction now. There are plenty of other places for user to get instant feedback. This is how the world works nowadays. Flood control. By limiting how often a person can post or send messages, you can at least prevent spammers from overwhelming the community with a flood of content. This makes it easier to prune the spam if they manage to post it. Feedback loops. Some community engines allow community members to report inappropriate content. For example, Invision Community has an automatic moderation feature. If a certain number of community members report the same content, it will be automatically hidden. 8. Advanced methods Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) enhances spam protection by adding an extra layer. It mandates users to provide two types of credentials to sign in: typically a password and a one-time code sent to their mobile device for registration. However, it has its drawbacks: it can prolong the registration process and may compromise users' privacy if they prefer to keep their mobile numbers confidential. Do you experience spam issues in your community? How time-consuming is spam handling for you? What tools do you use? Share your experiences and ideas in the discussion.

Keyword research What? You may think there is no need to research keywords if you have a forum or community. At the end of the day, users create the content, topics, and posts. That's right, but it's not the entire truth. As a community manager or forum admin, there are definitely areas over which you have control. For example: Title and slogan of your community Titles and metadata of your landing pages Description of the community in welcome widgets, footer area or newsletter CTA Description and titles of categories, groups, and spaces Thread and topic titles (yes, you have to edit them!) Knowledge base or glossary (Automatic) internal linking of important terms If you know exactly what your target group is looking for, you can use SEO to get more visitors from search results. For example, you might build a community for community owners. But do you know if your target audience searches for “building” or “creating”? Let's take a brief look at Google Trends. This basic analysis shows that “building” is more popular than “creating.” This isn't about how YOU call it; it's about what your potential community members look for. So, if you build this kind of community, stick to the wording “building” in the titles, descriptions, and other areas you control as an admin. It's as simple as that. If you would like to dive deeper, you can use free tools like Ubersuggest to find out what your target audience is interested in. I use Ubersuggest to find large topics for category structures, ideas for new discussion topics, and new articles. I also use it to edit the titles of popular topics to match search intent. For example, a user creates a topic with the title "Help! Events." The community finds the discussion interesting and starts to participate, asking questions and sharing experiences. The title of the topic can be renamed to something like "Online Community Events: Help Needed!" This would include an exact keyword that is often searched. If the discussion is helpful, it will appear in search engines, driving targeted traffic to your community. Title and metadata of landing pages The titles and metadata of your landing pages are crucial for attracting visitors to your forum. They are displayed in search results. If the title or description does not look appealing, users will scroll to the next result in the search list. Make it attractive by clearly stating what they will find on your site. Use free preivew tools to check your home page and most important landing pages. Try to look at this preview as someone who has never heard of your forum and community but is interested in the topic. Would you click on the entry in the search result? Are your title and meta description crafted to attract potential visitors searching for information about your topic? The title can emphasize the forum's unique proposition ("Ultimate/Friendliest/Unique Community"), while the meta description can highlight the benefits of joining the forum, such as accessing expert advice and connecting with like-minded individuals. Together, they aim to entice users to click on the link and explore your forum or community further. Tip: Connect your forum to Google Search Console to identify pages with the most views but few clicks. These pages are your gold mine. They are already served well in search results, but only a few people click on them. Enter the URLs of those pages in a free preview tool to find out what is wrong. Responsive (mobile-friendly) design Forums are the mammoth of the internet. The oldest forums stem from the last century. Responsive and mobile-friendly design came years later. Modern communities have it by default. A mobile-friendly design ensures that your forum is accessible and usable across various devices and screen sizes. Google prioritizes "mobile first" and ranks mobile-friendly websites higher in search results (at least for searches made on mobile devices). But is responsive design crucial for your community? It depends. If you have access to device stats, you can see what your target audience prefers. For example, coders or gamers do not surf on mobile a lot, while women and social media users do. I use Google Analytics to see how my communities are used. Here is an example of a community that is heavily used on mobile:: For this community, it is essential to have a responsive design and check every part of the community for usability on mobile devices. A responsive design significantly boosts this forum's visibility and traffic. In this case, I ensure the following: Navigation menus are condensed into a hamburger menu icon, conserving space while still providing access to all sections. Forum categories and posts are displayed in a single-column format, ensuring optimal readability on smaller screens. Buttons and links are appropriately sized for touch interaction, making it easy for users to navigate and engage with the content. Another community of mine is used primarily on desktops, with only a few users coming from mobile. I do not pay much attention to how it looks on mobile because this is not the target audience. The question of how important responsive design is for your community depends on the devices your target audience uses to visit the community. Friendly URLs User-friendly URLs are not only easier for visitors to read and understand, but also for search engines to crawl and index. By using relevant keywords in your URLs and avoiding unnecessary characters or parameters, you can improve your forum's SEO and make it more accessible to both users and search engines. Non-User-Friendly URL: https://www.forumexample.com/index.php?topic=123&post=456 User-Friendly URL: https://www.forumexample.com/growing-communities/tips-for-beginners In this example, the non-user-friendly URL consists of complex parameters and lacks readability. On the other hand, the user-friendly URL is structured in a way that clearly indicates the topic of the discussion (“growing-communities/tips-for-beginners”). Relevant keywords (“growing-community” and “tips-for-beginners”) in the URL help both users and search engines easily understand the content of the page. Internal links Internal linking helps to establish connections between different topics and pages within your community or forum. By strategically linking related content, you can help search engines discover and index your pages more effectively. Linking topics manually by keywords and phrases shows search engines what is related and what they should crawl next. Moreover, internal links can enhance the time users and guests spend on your site, which is a positive signal for search engines as well. Example scenario You have a forum dedicated to building online communities, and one of the popular topics is “Your best tips for growing a community”. Within this topic, users discuss various strategies, including SEO, social media promotion, and email marketing. Internal linking strategy can include the following steps: SEO Discussion: Within the “Tips for Growing Community” topic, you can internally link to a separate discussion focused specifically on SEO. This internal link could be anchored with relevant keywords like “SEO for community” or “how to get visitors from search engines.” Social Media Discussion: Similarly, if there's a separate thread discussing social media promotion for community, you can internally link to it from the main “Your best tips for growing a community” topic. Anchor the link with terms like “post on social media” or “attract new members from social media”. Email Marketing Discussion: Another useful internal link could lead users to a discussion about how to set up email marketing. Within the main topic, include an internal link anchored with keywords such as “bulk emails” or “controlling bounced emails in newsletters”. By strategically setting internal links within relevant discussions, you facilitate navigation for users interested in exploring related topics further. Search engine crawlers follow internal links to discover and index connected pages more efficiently, enhancing the overall visibility of your forum's content in search results. Some community and forum engines offer automatic internal linking by keywords out of the box. Internal linking should not necessarily be made between topics only. If you have an article section, glossary, or knowledge database, it is also good and useful to link to such content from within topics. Tip: Watch the metrics Average engagement time, Engaged sessions per user and Average engagement time per session in Google Analytics after you have implemented internal linking. Ideally, they will go up, proving that users are more engaged with your content. Schema markup Schema markup provides search engines with additional context about your discussion. For example, google search supports discussion forum and profile page structured data. This is known as rich snippet. Schema markup allows search engines to recognize structured data as forum posts, topics, authors, and more. To check if your forum or community engine supports this markup, you can use Schema markup testing tool. DiscussionForumPosting markup includes data such as the title, author, date published, and content of each post. Rich snippets generated from schema markup provide visually appealing search results, encourage click-throughs and engagement with your forum's content. By leveraging schema markup, you can gain a competitive edge over older or technically poor developed forums. Web Core Vitals Web Core Vitals are a set of metrics that measure page loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability of your discussion boards. Search engines like Google prioritize websites that offer a fast and smooth loading. Optimizing your forum for Web Core Vitals can help improve its search engine rankings and overall performance. Use PageSpeed Insights for testing. Depending on what devices your target audience uses most, you can pay more attention to Mobile (1) or Desktop (2). In the section below the summary, you will find tips such as identifying images, that are too large. Watch for Largest Contentful Paint element in Diagnostics. Just reducing the image size will improve your score instantly. Other tips for improving page loading speed: Implement caching to reduce the time it takes for returning visitors to load your forum's pages. Automatically change image sizes and other multimedia content to reduce file sizes without compromising quality. Minify CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files to reduce the amount of data transferred during page loading. Utilize content delivery networks (CDNs) to deliver forum content from servers located closer to users, reducing latency and improving loading times. Implement lazy loading for non-essential content, such as images below the fold, to prioritize interactivity for above-the-fold content. It depends on the forum or community engine you use if the options are available. If not, technical skills are required to implement them on your own. Sitemap for the forum Sitemap is a structured list of your topics and discussions in XML format. Your forum or community platform should create a sitemap automatically. This list helps search engines to find and discover your pages, even if they are not well-linked by internal linking. To figure out, if your community or forum has a sitemap, try these URLs: https://[yourdomain]/sitemap.xml https://[yourdomain]/sitemap.php You can validate your sitemap with a free online tool. There are two ways to suggest the URL of your sitemap to the search engines: Register with Google Search Console (GSC) and Bing Webmaster Tools. After registering, submit your sitemap URL. Add a file robots.txt to your community (see below) Robots.txt The robots.txt file is a simple text file that tells search engines which pages should be indexed and which to ignore. Properly configuring your robots.txt file can help prevent issues such as duplicate content or indexing of sensitive information. Search engines generally operate under a crawl quota, meaning they can only crawl a certain number of pages at once before stopping and resuming some days later. If you have many pages with simple redirects, poor or little content, they may not be indexed but still count toward the crawl quota. With robots.txt, you can prohibit crawling of pages that waste crawling quota. To test, if your forum or community already has robots.txt, try this URL: https://[yourdomain]/robots.txt Caution: Incorrectly configuring your robots.txt file can lead to the complete deindexing of your site from search engines. Before making any changes, read this comprehensive Google tutorial. Diving deeper There are many additional strategies you can explore to further improve your SEO. For instance, understanding what rel="nofollow" means or how to manage 301 redirects and 404 errors can be beneficial. This is where SEO begins to become complicated. This checklist covers the basics that account for about 80% of SEO, making it highly worthwhile. Search engine traffic is one of the free traffic sources that can significantly help your community grow. Was is it helpful? How many points from the checklist were new for you? Did you discover something you can improve? Share your experiences and ideas in the discussion.

I differ three types of online communities: Enterprise: Established businesses and brands building customizable and branded community platforms. Digital Business: Entrepreneurs, creators, leaders, and coaches building digital businesses around their community. They require budget-friendly community features integrated with payment options. The goal is monetization like selling memberships, courses, events, paywalls, etc. Personal: Individuals seeking free community platforms for recreational purposes. They usually opt for platforms like Facebook or Discord due to their accessibility. They do not need control of the data, monetization options, or branding. The platforms I talk about in this article should be suitable for digital business. Not over-priced, stable, popular and full of features we can use to monetize. The best way to find out the best platform is certainly a free trial. But this is not as easy as it seems. How many times have you registered for the trial and did not try at all? ;) Trials are time-limited and are faster expired as you find time for the test. The reason is often an overwhelming number of features the different platforms offer. How to compare them? In this article, I offer you a road map of how to make the best choice based on your goals. Brainstorm different communities sections Below you see the list of possible features, modules and functions the online communities platforms can offer. Go through the list and let you inspire with ideas: Discussions and Forums: Should all members of your community be able to participate in threaded discussions on various topics related to the community's theme or interests? Forums allow interaction, questions, and sharing of opinions and experiences. Groups or Circles: Should members of your community be able to create or join dedicated sections or smaller sub-communities within your main community? Groups are normally grouped around common interests, demographics, or goals. They usually require membership, and members must join the group to participate in its discussions and access its content. Articles and Blog Posts: Are you going to provide articles or blog posts written by you or experts on relevant topics? These posts can offer insights, tips, tutorials, or thought leadership content. Articles and posts serve as initial content to attract new members from search engines, show your expertise or give an added value to the discussions. Resource Libraries: Are you going to offer exclusive content for your community members? These can be e-books, white papers, guides, templates, and toolkits. Resource libraries are often download sections, where you or your community members share free or paid resources available only for community members. Webinars and Workshops: Do you aim to provide live or recorded webinars and workshops conducted by you or industry experts? Think also of scheduled Q&A sessions allowing members to ask questions, seek advice, and receive direct responses. Polls and Surveys: Would you like to create polls and surveys allowing to gather feedback, opinions, and insights from members on various community-related matters, such as content preferences, interests, or satisfaction levels? Events, calendar and meetups: Do you plan virtual or in-person events, meetups, and conferences? Or would you like to create an event hub related to your community's topic? Directories and databases: Are you going to build a directory of related content items? Think of companies, web resources, tools, courses, or products. User-generated content: Should your members be able to share their content items, like images, videos, articles, or success stories? Rating and comments for the shared items can be the fuel for the engagement. Challenges and Contests: Would you like to create and run community-wide challenges, contests, or competitions? Those formats encourage members to participate, showcase their skills, and engage with each other in a fun and interactive way. Email Marketing and News: Are regular announcements, news updates, and community newsletters relevant for your community? They can keep members informed about important developments, events, and changes in the scope of the community's topic. Courses and Tutorials: Would you like to create courses, masterclasses or tutorials for your community members? Courses can have different access levels, like paid membership to enroll. Wiki and knowledge bases: Is your community based on something that requires wiki or extended documentation? The wiki serves as a collaborative platform where community members can contribute, edit, and organize knowledge and information on various topics relevant to the community's interests. Interactive Tools: Do you need interactive tools like calculators, quizzes, tracks, tournaments, gamification, or assessments? User's Showcases and Assets: Should your member community be able to create individual lists of their possessions like cars, pets, or DIY work? Those lists can be a source of inspiration for other members. Ecommerce: Would you like to sell physical or digital items in your community? Offer coupons and discounts? Or should your members be able to trade with each other, like classifieds? Monetization: Do you require paywalls and subscriptions to offer a premium content for paid membership? Crowdfunding and Donations: Are crowdfunding and donations are essential to monetize your community? Your members can support maintenance costs, community events, and initiatives. Advertisement: Would you like to monetize your community with ad networks like AdSense, or sell banner spaces to direct advertisers? AI Assisted Content Creation: Are you eager to use built-in AI assistants that help to generate meaningful answers based on your existing messages? AI can also recognize NSFW content or automatically moderate unwanted contributions. Promotion: Should your community have a strong SEO and integrated social media promotion? Wishlist and Ideation: Would you like your members to vote on new features? An idea hub can help to discover what members really need. Probably you have something else in mind, I have not listed above. Create a list of 3 to 5 crucial features your community requires for launch. Do not try to cover all the features in the beginning. Focus on those that you can fill with content. You alone. You can save time using a generator for community ideas. But at the beginning, you will not have any members that will deliver a content. Having 15 empty sections does help nothing. Start small, grow after launch. The list of features entirely depends on the topic of the community. Thus, there is no common answer to what features are actually essential. There are some examples for features set based on the community's topic: Fitness Community Discussions and Forums Articles and Blog Posts Webinars and Workshops Challenges and Contests User-generated content like photos or videos Professional Networking Community Groups or Circles Events, Calendar, and Meetups Directories and Databases Courses and Tutorials Interactive Tools Parenting Community Polls and Surveys Resource Libraries User's Showcases and Assets Ecommerce Crowdfunding and Donations Figure out, what your community requires. Free trials, free plan or self-hosted for free? There are some community platforms that offer free trials, free plans or free self-hosted solutions. Free trials are time-limited but offer a full functionality while trialing. Free plans are feature-limited solutions but can be used without time limitation. Free self-hosted solutions must be downloaded and installed on your hosting. I suggest starting with platforms that have free plans: Bettermode and Podia. Then proceed with trials of Mighty Networks, Invision Community, Discourse, and Circle. And at the end you can test a free WordPress plugin Peepso. Bettermode Bettermode is an easy-to-navigate community. It has a customizable landing page for your members to explore the community. Activity feed keeps members hooked with personalized and contextual content driven by members' participation in Spaces and preferences. Gamification is available with fully automated smart badges as well as manually created badges. You can choose a community language and enable your members to translate your community content in real-time. Free plan: Start for free. No credit card required. Pricing: $19/mo for the Lite plan. Podia Podia lets you build free and paid communities. Set up forum-like topics for your members to discuss, give access to products, or use your community as a private feed. Your members can access your products from within your community. You can make your community paid or "invite only" to keep the quality of conversations high. Free plan: Start for free. No credit card required. Pricing: $9/mo for the Starter plan. Mighty Networks Mighty Network is a solid solution for digital business. They offer chat, courses, resource library, events calendar, polls and more. It is not as cheap as Podia, but if you see the possibilities Mighty offers you will know why. Free trial: 14-Day Free Trial | No credit card required Pricing: $99/mo for the Courses plan. Invision Community Invision Community is a well-known forum system. It is now a bit for “boomer". But they announced a major update that looks promising. The screenshot above is not the latest version. As you can see above, Invision Community moves from classical forums to an online community look. Considering decades of experience with user-generated content, this platform can be a great solution for a business community. It is a very robust engine with a lot of built-in functionality like blogs, gallery, events calendar, clubs, resource libraries, directories, and listings. Free trial: 30-Day Free Trial | No credit card required Pricing: $49/mo for the Beginner plan. Circle Circle is as a comprehensive and user-friendly community platform that provides the essential features needed to build, manage, and grow an online community under your own brand. It provides features like live streams, events with RSVP, discussions, chat, and the ability to create courses directly within the platform. It also has built-in affiliate marketing tools. Free trial: 14-Day Free Trial | No credit card required Pricing: $99/mo for the Professional plan. Discourse Discourse is a discussion platform with integrated AI to make it easier to use and moderate. It is open source and can be used for free if you install it on your own hosting. You can use trial to test it before installing on your own. ;) This community platform includes a sophisticated discussion board and can be extended by various plugins. E.g., add subscriptions or integrate Patreon to reward your patrons with exclusive access. It is something for techies though. Free trial: 14-Day Free Trial | No credit card required. Pricing: $50/mo for the Basic plan (cloud). Free: Discourse is 100% free if installed on your own hosting. Peepso Peepso is a WordPress plugin. It can be used for e-learning, online communities with paid membership, marketplaces, job boards, completions and so on. It has a free version and a premium one. There is plenty of functionality, it is installed on over 4.000+ WordPress sites and is very well rated on the WordPress plugins directory. Free: 100% free version to download and install on your WordPress. Pricing: $199/year for Ultimate Bundle. Conclusion In conclusion, navigating the plethora of features offered by various platforms can be a daunting task when seeking the best solution for your needs. However, as discussed in this article, if you focus on essential features only, you can save time and hassle. Use the trial period as a strategic tool to ensure the chosen platform suits your requirements. As for me. I was very impressed by Bettermode, its simplicity and user-friendly configuration. It promises a quick start for non-technical community owners with limited time. I love Peepso because of WordPress. It gives me a full control over data, look-and-feel and SEO. For my old community projects, I stay with Invision Community. This platform is the best for me because I do not need to explore any features. I know them all. ;)