I am very proud to announce that my new book, “Managing Online Forums: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Run Successful Community Discussion Boards”, is now available and can be purchased online at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and other retailers. If you are in the United States, it is being stocked nationally at Barnes & Noble locations, as well. You can check stock status at the closest store to you on their website.

“Managing Online Forums” is the result of my years of experience running online communities and forums. The book is definitely appropriately titled: it is truly a forums management book, but with principles that can apply to other types of online communities, like blogs, as well. From creating the infrastructure of the community and setting and enforcing policies to dealing with troublemakers and managing staff. This isn’t a programming book or a software book, this is all about managing the actual forums.

Here is some of the advance praise that it has received:

“O’Keefe provides an impressively insightful, comprehensive, and cogent blueprint for building a loyal and responsive community online.”
–Ryan Leslie, Founder, NextSelection Lifestyle Group, recording artist, producer, and online video pioneer

“Patrick is one of the true leaders in online community building, and his knowledge isn’t just theoretical, it is based on ‘in the trenches’ experience – and those experiences will prove invaluable as you look to leverage community in your endeavors.”
–Jeremy Wright, CEO, b5media, and author, Blog Marketing

“Online forums make up the very foundation of the social web. Unfortunately, there are few resources for the growing number of people who work behind the scenes to make them successful. In this comprehensive book, Patrick O’Keefe brings his real-world experiences to bear in the form of strategies, tactics, and ideas that fill a knowledge gap that has begged to be filled for too long.”
–Lee LeFever, Principal, Common Craft

Here is a look at the chapters featured in the book:

Chapter 1. Laying the Groundwork
Chapter 2. Developing Your Community
Chapter 3. Developing Guidelines
Chapter 4. Promoting Your Community
Chapter 5. Managing Your Staff
Chapter 6. Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos
Chapter 7. Creating a Good Environment
Chapter 8. Keeping It Interesting
Chapter 9. Making Money

It also features three helpful appendices at the end that include online resources, a glossary and blank, general templates that you can use as a basis for your own user guidelines, staff member guidelines and contact templates (pre-written messages for you and your staff to use when contacting members).

For more information on the book, including a full table of contents, advance praise, interviews and reviews, an excerpt, downloadable document templates, an example forums setup and more, please check out the book website.

Thank you for reading and for visiting ManagingCommunities.com.

Sincerely,

Patrick

I just wanted to mention that the “Managing Online Forums” Example Forums have launched. What are they? Well, I had the idea to put up some forums that displayed just a few of the concepts that I discuss in the book, like a staff forums set up, various guidelines, a system of documentation for violations and more. Sometimes, it’s easier to consider something if you can see it in front of you. So, I hope that some find it useful. :)

Martin Reed of Community Spark was kind enough to ask me to guest blog and the article I wrote for him has been published. It’s called “Why Making All of Your Forums Private is a Bad Idea”.

Judging from the Barnes & Noble website, “Managing Online Forums” is now in stock in their stores from coast to coast in the United States! The book is being sold by many fine booksellers, both offline and online and I am sincerely appreciative of all of them. So, I’d encourage you to purchase it from your favorite seller, if you are kind enough to pick up a copy, which I would really appreciate.

But, if you are in the U.S. and you’d like to take a look at the book in person, it should be in stock at your local Barnes & Noble. You can check stock information on their site. If you do pick one up, please let me know what you think!

It’s an exciting and humbling time. Now, of course, the hard part. Will people buy it? Are there enough people who manage forums out there who will find this book? I’m doing as much as I can to make sure! And I appreciate any help that you can offer me. Thank you.

This isn’t something we usually do here at ManagingCommunities.com, but it’s kind of a unique situation. Ryan Leslie, a singer, music producer, entrepreneur and more, was kind enough to provide some advance praise for the book. And he just released his first music video. It’s for “Diamond Girl”, a track that is already charting on the Billboard Hot 100 (i.e. the most important music singles chart). I like the song a lot. So, please check out the video below.

I just did a guest spot over at the FreeForums.org blog. It’s titled, “It’s Important to be Visible on Your Forum”.

Michael Kimsal of WebDevRadio had a mini-review of the book on yesterday’s show. I’ll be appearing on his show later this month and he is inviting anyone to submit questions for the interview. He’s giving away a pair of books randomly to those who do so – one copy of mine and one copy of “Dreamweaver 8: The Missing Manual”. So, if you have any interest in entering, please check out his site.