I began to question where forums fit into the present day socially oriented Internet picture in November when I wrote Where Do Forums Fit on a Social Network Driven Internet? The consensus was that forums are still wanted, needed and could still serve.

For me, personally, to keep at it for what is now my 12th year as a moderator (10 years with my club/forum, plus 2 years moderating email list discussions before that), I needed to find ways to keep me interested and decided I was likely not alone.

There are many forums in the SEO/M, marketing, web design and development and software QA/dev space. Each has its devoted community. You can pick and choose and sometimes find a “home” in a forums environment that feels right for you.

For Cre8asiteforums, I wanted to do see what we could come up with for 2008 that would help the staff feel good about being there, and the Cre8tive Community feel inspired after visiting. We know our members are smart and busy people. How can we support them? What do they care about? What do they want to know more about?

My co-admin, Bill Slawski, and I, brainstormed with friends and forums staff. We changed the forums tagline to “Building Better Web Sites Together, For A Better World” because this matches what matters to us as people in the industries we serve and work in.

Today we’ve launched the first of our ideas. There will be more surprises as the months progress. We have several things in the works that we’re excited about, but because it’s nearly all done in our so-called “spare” time, it sometimes takes a bit longer to push out the door.

Two New Forums

Bill Slawski starts off with one of our new forums, called NonProfits on the Web. We want to learn how nonprofits market themselves. What issues do they face in search engines, marketing, branding, competition, credibility? What is a nonprofit site? Where do site owners network? Are there usability concerns unique to non-profit design vs profit? What keeps them inspired when the going gets tough and for no pay?

Within hours of launch, there are already three very good discussions there.

The other new forum is one we’re also very hopeful about for a forums where search engine marketers and web designers gather. This one is focused on advances in Internet technology and intends to explore new programming and potential usability or search engine issues related to them. Do you know what’s coming? Our Pierre Far leads the way with Cre8tive Tomorrow. Microsoft’s Silverlight, Adobe’s FLEX, Silverlight 1.0, Google’s Android, Gears, OpenSocial, and Facebook apps. Do any of these ring a bell?

We want to invite you to teach and share at Cre8asiteforums.

I was young the day John F. Kennedy was killed but I knew the world had changed. I remember my college house mates and I huddled in shock the day John Lennon was shot and killed. Maybe it was the influence of those two tragic events because on the very day I first saw the Internet I thought to myself, “This can help create peace (cre8pc).”

Next year Cre8asiteforums will be 10 years old for me. For most everyone else, it’s younger. But for me, it’s 10 because I launched its first incarnation, the Cre8pc Website Promotion club, in Yahoo! in 1998. Its present forums-like format came about in 2002.

As the forums and I grow older together, something has been nagging me. I am not doing what I set out to do in 1995 when I decided to become a webmaster. I’m not consciously participating in creating a good world. I’m not doing enough of whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing and of course, every day I wonder what the heck that something is.

I decided one day that I’m not alone. There are others like myself who are using the Internet to do good things for other people, places, countries, kids, organizations, clubs, animals, the planet, parents, business support, etc. Who are they? Where are they? What can I do to help? What can they can teach me? How do we connect? Are their efforts worth it?

In January, Cre8asiteforums will have news on our new non-profit forum. We will showcase people and companies devoted to marketing non-profit organizations and web sites. We want to explore who they are, what they do, how they do it, who they do it for and why they care.

But why wait until January?

I Have Great Friends

First, is Elizabeth Able who, despite personal hardships, has a blast rallying for causes and educating along the way. She’s launched a meme, called Tips for Nonprofits Meme.

I’m starting a round of blog tag in support of nonprofits that have an online presence. The idea is to write up one tip for how nonprofits can benefit from an online presence, and challenge others to do the same. Don’t worry about having the same tip as someone else, as long as your take on the tip adds something to the original idea.

This meme comes with four guidelines:

1. Offer one tip
2. Tag three people. Bonus points for including blogs that support or represent nonprofits.
3. Please link back to this page. If you link, I will contact you about including your tip in a compilation of tips generated by this meme.
4. Remember to pass on the guidelines

Unsure how to respond to Liz when she tagged me for this meme, the answer came when I got word from my friend BJ Cook of the soon to launch company, Eleho.org. He’s helping to get the word out about Burma and the genocide happening there. He wrote to me about TheRoadFilm.com

“5 local San Diego young professionals risked their lives to share never seen before footage with us and are now on a mission to bring it to the world.”

The web site is about a journey and following through when you’re called on by that Inner Bonk on the Head. It’s a story of doing, not sitting back and waiting for someone else to take action.

I hope Liz doesn’t mind that my “tip” for nonprofits is simply to find ways to get the word out on your project. All I did was to get an email from a friend about his latest adventure. He was smart to tap me because he knows I love to support my friends. Marketing can start with gentle conversations.

I’m tagging:

I like the conversations from people like Jennifer Laycock and The Lactivist, which supports an Ohio breast milk bank.

Heather Swain, owner of Rememberwell.net, “The spot for alternative death and dying information”.

Seo By The Sea’s, Bill Slawksi, because his post on Green Communities and Social Networks was viewed by a large number of people and is an excellent resource for anyone researching nonprofits and conscious living.

Next year, in addition to the steady stream of usability, user experience design, marketing, search engine, search engine marketing and social media news, there will be one more angle coming from here and Cre8asiteforums.

Inspiration.

Last Friday I hinted at change and today I’ll hint more. I feel like I’m reading a book, the characters are all deeply involved in the action and I can’t wait to see how they resolve everything. Today, I’ll put to rest the rumors about Cre8asiteforums.

I die, see Dumblefore, who only pretended to die in the last book, and we magically both come back to life just in time to save the world from the devastation created by social media sites and Google.

It Takes a Village to Raise a Forums

Cre8asiteforums is taking new steps towards becoming a conscious contributor to the web site design and search engine marketing industries. We changed our tagline from “Building Better Websites Together” to “Building Better Web Sites Together, For A Better World”.

After Thanksgiving and hopefully next month, I’ll announce our forums Site Sponsor. They are a well-known company who have been strong supporters for Cre8asiteforums and have offered to financially assist the forums in our mission to provide community, support and peaceful co-creation and product development. In return, they get to share their business, products and services with a mighty global reach.

One of my personal guiding principles is the Native American belief, “We’re all Relatives”. They believe that everything is Life, from the “two legged” (humans), to “four legged” (animals) and all plants, rocks, insects, sea life, etc. (It extends to the Ancestors and Spirits Unborn yet too.) When you approach life with the belief that everything you do has an effect on a Relative of your’s, you become more conscious, instead of unconscious, as we tend to be in the daily whirlwind of life.

I can’t begin to describe how difficult it is to run an Internet forums when you believe that everyone who arrives, including the spammers, are Relatives. Even the people who are arrogant, uncooperative, and have an agenda are valuable and rightfully there.

I think it’s very difficult for the people who chose to be Moderators in Cre8asiteforums to be patient in a forums where “Mom”, as I’m sometimes referred to, believes automated bots should be invited to Thanksgiving dinner. (Okay, I don’t really. I’m not that evolved yet.)

The point is, my Co-Administrator, Bill Slawski, and I, care deeply about where web development and web marketing fits into the Big Global Picture and how we can co-create with like-minded professionals in ways that manifest into positive, mindful products, without hurting or destroying the planet along the way.

We’re thinking Green Marketing. We’re inspired by positive problem solving and cooperation.

The Color Green

Green is the color of trees. Green is also the color of USA money and since I live in America, it’s the color I see the most of. (Actually, if you use PayPal, it has no color at all.)

As part of our “going green plan”, Cre8pc.com is turning Cre8asiteforums into a revenue generating business.

I have a VERY LONG PLAN, which I gave to Bill to help me whittle down to SOMETHING PLAUSIBLE. Yesterday I announced to our Moderators the introduction of two new forums. I’ll tell you about them once we name and install them. One is focused on non-profit endeavors and one is focused on for-profit. We like the balance there.

The forums blog, Cre8tiveFlow, stays and is undergoing an overhaul. We’re a forums known for incredible discussions that tap into what people are thinking, feeling and questioning. The blog highlights them. We also have prolific writers on our staff and the Community at large, who we’ll be giving more exposure to. Friends in the business who have reputable books, educational programs, and tools with affiliate programs attached, will find a home in our Blog to advertise them.

Baby Steps

This is just a hint of what’s to come. A mere whisper, in fact. For 2008, as we get “play money”, we will be supporting the industries we serve in ways we’ve long dreamed of doing, in ways we know will help based on a year of research and feedback.

Big Step

What began as a club in 1998 and formed into a forums in 2002, is now looking at its 10th year in 2008. Fame and fortune were never the purpose of starting the discussion forum. I felt it was time, in today’s Internet environment, to make changes because the forums are too large to be a simple “labor of love” project.

There are no unrealistic expectations for a flawless flow of change and I have no desire to turn Cre8asiteforums into “Fluffy the cat”, where everything is politically correct and coordinated by Disney.

The only obvious difference is that we’ll be running the ship more like a business so we can do more stuff.

First there was “chat”. I typed in a subject I was interested in and AOL took me to a virtual room where people were talking about it. I shyly disguised my name and joined in the discussion. Before long, my screeching modem was a regular household sound.

The year was 1995. I was a newly divorced mom and did I EVER chat with some fascinating dudes, lemme tell ya.

I inhaled those people I met. They argued. They had ideas. Some were naughty, some weren’t used to the sudden freedom of expression and so they told us everything, in detail. They came from everywhere.

How Freedom Felt

I fell in love with the Internet because nobody knew me and frankly, neither did I. I could make up a different me every day. Some days I was so hot and people actually believed that stuff!

The rest of the story is the same thing that happened to hundreds of thousands of other people. I built my first web site and hosted it on AOL until I learned a better way. Chatting led me to email lists, Deja News, instant chat rooms, IM, newsgroups and eventually eGroups, which Yahoo! ate up and spit back out as Yahoo! Clubs. I hosted and moderated email lists early on, having passed my 10th year of moderating in 2006.

I was employed as a webmaster by companies that had no idea what we did, nor any respect for us either.

The year I went independent and stopped working for everybody else was the same year I left the SEO industry, dove into Usability full-time and started Cre8asiteforums.

When Do Forum Owners Get to Leave?

I realized something over the weekend, while recalling the first few years when I kept telling the forums staff I wanted to get off the ship and let them have it. Now I can’t leave.

I’ve married it.

Did Brett Tabke marry his forums? Did Jill Whalen marry her’s? Does anyone who starts these gigantic projects ever consider how to get off the ride?

Why am I still typing and not out planting trees?

In the news today is the now announced decision by Ammon Johns to leave his post as Adminstrator for Cre8asiteforums. He was the famous guy there. It was never me and Bill Slawski, though to our credit, we know five people now.

What is MY purpose as a forums founder? Who has even heard of Cre8asiteforums? Not everyone. Who is it for? Not everyone. That is our thing. We are a tribe that represents quality vs. quantity, holistic vs. tunnel vision and fireside chats with beer or peach schnapps over shot gun duels to the death.

It is one of many, many forums to choose from and yet if it disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think the hole in its place would be that large. The hole in the hearts of the Community, however, is a completely different matter.

It is for them that we remain committed. It is for you, we have a soft spot.

There are days when I lack the desire to keep this up and without fail, the forums staff puts me straight. They tolerate me quite well.

Why A Forums?

With social media being the fad, yet another new and wonderful way is available to chat with people. We still need to be moderated, as a recent ruckus at Sphinn will show. It’s still fun to have a place where we disguise our names and scream out obscenities because we’re far, far better than everyone else.

Search engine marketing blogs communicate, even if one sided and not always in a chatty way. Nowadays, we can hear real voices with podcasts and view real bodies with video. Forums can’t replace the beauty of watching people doing things online they’d NEVER do in your actual living room.

Are forums dying out?

Have they become narrower in their purpose? For example, at Cre8asite, there is a core group of both active Community members and moderators who visit and participate often. That core is shrinking as their expertise grows, making them more attractive to employers. This, in turn, means less time for forums.

Whereas, an outer ring of people visit only when they need something. They take. They don’t give. They don’t remain long enough to be known or trusted.

I’m wondering if this is our future. We’re still talking to one another but instead of a nice long discussion, we’re now down to votes, comments, 500 word limited blog posts, hopscotching links to get from one thought to another and otherwise no longer staying long enough to care about each other.

When the caring totally stops, that’s when I know it’s time for me to get off the ride.

This topic went “Hot” at Sphinn on September 18.

Every once in awhile someone will come to Cre8asiteforums to ask how to start or market their own forums. I always have two thoughts. Firstly, why are they selling their forums in ours? That’s tacky. Secondly, do they have any idea what they’re getting themselves into?

While technically I own Cre8asiteforums, true “ownership” belongs to the entire community. This is what I’m most comfortable with. It’s also difficult to manage that way for a variety of reasons and impossible if you’re a control freak. If you are one, think long and hard about the part called about “Community”.

Experience and Experimentation

I’ve been associated in some way with online communities since 1995. It’s a way of life. My experiences are all over the place. Some of them were ways to test the waters of a certain genre. Some were to teach myself new skills and what better way than to jump in head first? My community travels have not been focused on just search engines and web design topics. I’ve moderated email lists on taboo topics, sensitive topics, emotionally charged topics, pushing the envelope of thought topics, business topics and have even moderated a group where one of the community members was my own mother.

I didn’t use my real name there, and she referred to me there by my other name. It was quite unique and it opened up an interesting way for her and I to get to know one another in a new way.

Cre8asiteforums is global, with a large Moderating staff and several technical Administrators. We’ve faced everything from birthdays, to emergencies to moving to new software and servers together. Through it all, we’ve shared it openly with the membership.

When we chose to earn revenue, we had several options. Our needs were not great, but money makes more things possible. We settled on a compromise way of ad sales that was worked out with the community’s input first. Our members have their own forum inside the forums to tell us what they want in “their” forums.

We dream a lot. The staff would like to meet each other. The first time most of the Moderating staff got to see me was when Webpronews released the first video interview of me at the Chicago SES. They heard my voice for the first time. They saw my face move and heard me giggle too much. That was a big moment. We even get excited if one of us gets to talk to another one on the phone.

Online forums birth families, but it’s not enough. Some connections aren’t complete unless you can talk to each other, shake hands, hug and especially laugh together.

You Can’t Just Up and Walk Away

There is one discussion I never see anywhere on forums, and that’s how to turn it off. Cre8asiteforums, in its present incarnation, was launched almost 5 years ago. Before that, it existed as a club for 4 years. That means I’ve been dedicated to it for 9 years and that’s not counting the other places I was moderating alongside my own.

I could walk away from the others, but not mine because there’s many people to consider who have invested their time and skills to it as well. If something bad happens to me, I already know enough people will do what they feel is in the best interest of the forums. Still, having a plan for your forums is important to consider. You may not always be here to care for it.

So You Wanna Be a Forums Star

Daily life as a forums owner is a chore that never ends. This is the part that I think never gets discussed enough. So here it is. If you can live with it, you will thrive with your own forums.

1. No days off unless you have one or more persons who can handle anything that comes up. That includes hacking, server issues, a member that goes beserk or someone has a question only an Admin. can handle. Other people besides you need access to the server, so trust is vital.

2. No days off because if you aren’t there, it’s just not the same without you and your community misses you.

3. No days off because spam never sleeps.

4. Some moderators will moderate the entire forum, while others will moderate their own assigned forums only and if nothing is happening there, you won’t see them.

5. You can’t be a prude, thin-skinned or easily offended. You wouldn’t believe the things we see people post. (See 5a.)

5a. What People Spammers Post: Nude pictures inside posts; stupid usernames with every possible spelling variation of narcotics ever invented; links to porn sites; (Of course we look!), links to Britney’s you-know-what; pictures of that too; and her friends; political statements of every variety including some we never did understand; links to one’s own website because it’s the “coolest”, “greatest”, “new thing I found”, etc.

6. Not everyone gets into the forums that signs up. If they manage to get past the validation stuff that tries to prevent automated spam, we track IP’s of everyone who joins. We know who spammed us before and there is no second chance. We close the door on re-entry. Those who get in and used a jolly old assortment of letters from the alphabet for their username are banned because frankly, they’re likely not even people.

7. We love emoticons so much that we have a moderator who has the special job of finding us more so we can accurately express ourselves. Some of these emoticons are not used out front where the community can see us because we are terribly naughty, mean, and some of us have a peculiar love of blowing spammers to bits with our emoticon guns. We have a whole hidden forum where we shoot spammers and blow up their information. Who needs video games?

8. Moderators come and go. Some Admins come and go. Members come and go. If you get attached to people, running a forums can be constant source of good-byes. Some members, however, have us at “Hello”. Some of them are adopted as new Moderators or we just drool all over them because we love whatever they post.

9. We scramble outbound links in posts, profiles and signatures. If we didn’t do so, we’d have something like negative 30 PR and who wants that? Why should we suffer so that you can promote your websites? Did I just say that?

10. No days off. Even you think you have one, you can’t possibly be a good forums owner if you can forget your forums for even a day. Mine comes with me on vacation, seminars, and even to bed.

Think I’m kidding?

You try relaxing with over 10,000 people visiting your house every day.

See also the funny piece, The Life of a Leading Search Blog Owner