Forum-Engine Overview

This page provides a quick overview of the main benefits of being part of the Forum-Engine Network.

Forum-Engine.com is designed to meet the challenges typically faced by many forum owners. This page explains five main ways this is accomplished.

1) Free Hosting, Software And Support

Forum-Engine accounts include free forum hosting, free forum software, and free technical support delivered directly from the programmer of Forum-Engine.

All costs and technical issues are lifted from your shoulders, so you can focus on creating a quality community experience for your visitors.

2) Free Traffic To Your Forum

Most sites find it difficult to get a forum off the ground on their own, because they just don't have the traffic necessary to get a series of good conversations going.

You can begin to solve this very common problem by placing your forum within a forum network like Forum-Engine.com.

Let's explore the forum network concept.

What's A Forum Network?

A forum network is a collection of different forums that all share one site.

Each forum owner in the network manages their own fully independent community. Each forum owner picks their own topics, sets their own policies, manages their own users and content, chooses their own logo, etc.

All the different forums in the forum network are linked together through a site wide navigation system.

Navigation Connects The Forums

See the "Forum Network Navigator" tool at the bottom of this page. This "Forum Network Navigator" navigation tool is located at the bottom of every page of every forum in the network. Thus, a visitor to any one forum is introduced to all the other forums.

This means that every time any forum owner promotes their own forum, they are also helping feed traffic in to all the other forums in the network.

If your site is too small to support a forum on it's own, you can begin to solve that problem by placing your forum within a forum network.

It's the same concept as opening a brick and mortar store in the mall, instead of on a quiet side street. If you set up your forum in a forum network, you can tap in to traffic being generated by the other forums in the network. As the network grows, so does the traffic to your forum.

3) Content Management Tools

Forum-Engine accounts come with content management tools often not available in other environments.

You can create your rooms (sections of your forum) in any of the following three formats:

Open: In an open room, all registered members can post. You are notified of each new post by email, and can remove unwanted posts with one click.

Moderated: In a moderated room, all posts are sent to you for prior approval before being published. You approve a post with one click.

Closed: In a closed room, only you can post. This allows you to create a section of your forum dedicated to your own writings, like a blog.

The availability of these options allows you to create a forum that has the level of content supervision that is appropriate for your project.

4) Team Management Tools

As your forum becomes more popular, you may want to bring in trusted friends, partners or employees to help you manage the action.

Your Forum-Engine account allows you to assign different moderators to different rooms. As example, if you have a forum about pets, your friend the dog expert can moderate The Dog Room, while your cat loving friend manages The Cat Room.

Moderators have control over what is published in the room(s) you have assigned them to, but don't have access to the main control panel you use to manage your forum.

5) Operate Multiple Forums

Do you need more than one forum? Ok, no problem. If you do a good job with your first forum, by creating a quality content community that enhances the network, we'll be happy to give you more forums.

All your forums can be managed from one central control panel within your Forum-Engine account.

Additional Information

If you'd like to learn more about the Forum-Engine Network, help yourself to the following options.

Read more articles about the Forum-Engine Network on this site.

Join the conversation about the Forum-Engine Network on our support forum.

For additional detail regarding the features available to forum owners, please see the manual.