best practices to follow?

[ray8888888]

Hello everyone, I’ll start off letting you know I’m a complete newbie to the world of administrating forums. What I was wondering, is there any documentation of best practices to follow when setting up a new forum site.

Some of the questions I have.

Is there a default size for avatars and pictures that 99% of forum administrators use?

Is there a handy list of words that should be put into the censorship area? I put in the basics but I’m not up to speed on slang words.

Do people use ranks, reputations, or titles in a business/education environment?

I think I remember reading somewhere to keep stickied posts to a reasonable number so they don’t clutter up the top of the pages. Anyone have a number that they recommend?

I haven’t seen any posts about common things that people do when managing forums, so it’s worthwhile asking I think. Anyone have any words of advice on what not to do?

[feldon23]

1. IT really depends on your forum for Avatar and Picture size. Some forums are graphically very 'loud' and it's all about people expressing themselves visually. Some forums, it's all about the conversation and imagery should be in the background. I used to have my avatars limited to 65 x 65. I've since relaxed that to 80 x 80 as computer monitors continue to grow. I might go 100 x 100 some day. I am very restrictive about Signature image size and styling (no huge BMW advertisements please!). I would imagine that on a business site, you want to minimize image sizes.

2. I'm sure some Google searches for censor words blacklist will give you a good list of words.

3. I can definitely see Titles useful in a business environment, to more easily identify trusted users. vBulletin lets you add users to Secondary Usergroups and you can then make it so certain usernames show up in bold, color, etc.

4. 5 is the most I'll keep. When I have needed 8-10 sticky topics, I have created an HTML table with buttons for each one and place that above the forum topic list.

5. This is the How To forum. I think what you're looking for is more in the Chit Chat or Server Management forums.

[ribman]

Yes, I ray8888888 I have been looking for best practices information for operating a forum a long time now but I haven't found any yet. Does anyone know of any?