Yesterday was April 1 – April Fools’ Day for those who celebrate it. For me, it is a tradition that I do something to celebrate the day on some of the communities and websites that I manage. This year was no different!

Here at ManagingCommunities.com, I wrote the obituary for online forums. They are everywhere and, yet, they are dead. How’d it happen? areforumsdead.com even confirmed it by saying “YES.”

On phpBBHacks.com, we launched phpBBHacks.com By Mail, a new service that provided complementary paper prints of phpBB hacks, styles, graphics and other packages available on our website. The prank came complete with working order forms! I teamed up with my friend Jared W. Smith to make it happen.

On PhotoshopForums.com, we announced that, in order to keep up with the latest trends in communication, we would start limiting posts to 140 characters. Because, after all, no one wants to talk about things in detail anymore. A former member of my staff, Matt Whiting, suggested it.

photo credit: AlaskaLoneWolf

We all get those questions about how to do something within our community. How do I post in this section? How do I change my avatar? How do I upload an image?

Some would tell you that if you get a lot of questions, that means you need to make it easier. That’s not a bad point. But, no matter how easy something is, you will still get asked how to do it.

Why not create a video where you show your members how it is done? This is something that I haven’t yet done myself, that I really want to. I have already seen others doing it.

Now, you might say that you don’t want to be on camera or you don’t have the equipment. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to be on camera and you don’t necessarily need to spend any extra money to do it.

photo credit: tompagenet

Séoghán Mac Mathúna asked: How would you recommend growing and actively engaging a community that is largely only present to seek support?

Support forums and communities exist to give support. There is no getting around that and you can never forget it because if you fail at that, you fail at everything. Certainly, that is the cornerstone.

In running a support communities, you will find that a large portion of the people who register and post are there to get help and go. They need what they need and then they want to get back to their lives – and back to using whatever it is that you are supporting.

You have to understand and respect this. Once you accept that, there are opportunities to go beyond that and to engage people in other ways, hopefully giving them a reason to stay longer.

I just returned from the 2012 edition of South by Southwest Interactive. I have been fortunate enough to speak at the conference for the previous 4 iterations and this year, spoke on a panel about copyright.

Every year, I hear people complain about SXSW. Which is natural. The bigger you are, the more challenges you face and the more reasons people have to complain. Popular complaints include: it’s too big, it’s too spread out and the programming isn’t good. In a way, SXSW is a victim of it’s own massive success.

Complaints can offer great value and help the conference get better. But, some of it is just a matter of taste, perspective and familiarity. “For those who keep saying they had a bad SXSW or it’s not good… stay home!,” writes my friend Wayne Sutton on Google+. I feel that.

photo credit: Lars Plougmann

I’m down at South by Southwest Interactive right now and, having spoken at numerous events over the years, what strikes me most about SXSW is the atmosphere and the energy. It is incomparable to any event I’ve been at.

If you go to a big conference in New York, you don’t walk down the street and only see conference attendees. When you’re in the concentration of people in downtown Austin for SXSW, it is essentially all that you see. It just has a crazy energy, a crazy buzz and that is why people keep coming back.

It’s a culture thing. SXSW has grown so much, but what drives the numbers is the culture. It’s the feeling on the streets and in the halls.

That’s what you want to try to replicate on your community. That excitement, that unique energy is one of the things that makes it unique.

It starts with people, sharing good information and building relationships. People get excited about the discussion, about what others will say and about the replies and attention that their contribution will receive. It’s part anticipation and it drives people to return.

People can certainly include you and your staff, if applicable. While you will need to be the person that people don’t like sometimes, when you are telling them they can’t do something, also make sure that you are encouraging and stimulating excitement about your community.

Thank people who make great contributions, highlight unique and meaningful dialog and help add that excitement and defend it from those who try to take it away.

photo credit: Kdt.

Josh Barraza asked if I could write about merging two active online forums and the issues that can challenge such an idea. Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Barraza.

Multiple forums can be merged. It doesn’t just have to be two. It can be more than that. But, for the sake of this article, to keep it simple, we’ll speak as if it is two forums that are merging into one, since that is the most common scenario.

When two forums are merged, the two separate databases are consolidated into one, meaning all members, posts and content will now constitute a single forum. If one forum had 400,000 posts and another had 300,000 – there is now one forum with 700,000 posts.

photo credit: WallTea

Last week, photo sharing community Flickr, responding to a member suggestion, enabled code that blocked Pinterest users from pinning photos where the photographer has turned off sharing options or marked a photo as private or adult.

Though VentureBeat reported the story initially, Aaron Hockley has the most concise, accurate run down of the move (which I found through Flickr member Jake Rome).

The code that Flickr integrated was introduced by Pinterest just two days prior to the suggestion being made, in an effort to address dissatisfaction with how the service manages copyright infringement.

photo credit: SmithGreg

I recently had a member on one of my communities start a thread to review a book, which he criticized. Most of his review was fair, but there were some parts that I felt were a little harsh. Still, it was appropriate for our community.

As an author, I do sympathize with other authors because when you really invest of yourself to write a book that means something to you, there is a vulnerability in that. I also don’t want our community to be known for unfairly harsh reviews so while the review itself was OK, I went ahead and replied to steer the topic toward productive discussion.

The next thing I did was to invite the author of the book to the community. I told him about the discussion that was occurring on the community and made clear what was being said. I explained what our community was about – that it is a friendly, respectful community – and encouraged him to join to offer his thoughts.

photo credit: ornello_pics

Josh Barraza asked if I would talk about how you can revive a “dead” online community. That’s a great suggestion.

Before we talk about the how, there are a couple of simple truths that we need to keep in mind.

The definition of “dead” will vary by person, by community and by person running the community. You may look at something as “dead” when someone else sees it as fine.

If you are running the community and you consider it dead, then that is one thing. But, otherwise, be careful how you view, and judge, other communities. They aren’t always intended to have regular activity or to grow on an activity basis. Everyone has different goals.

photo credit:
erin_everlasting

There are a number of ways to tackle the index page of your community. It’s about showcasing your content and your members and that can be pretty flexible. Different approaches have different benefits and work well, depending on your audience and situation.

The traditional list of forums can work well. Another popular one is showing some of the recent topics or some featured topics. That can work, too. Options are a good thing and I’d love to see activity streams become an option for more platforms, either as a default feature that you can turn on or off or as a hack or add-on.

By an activity stream, what I meant is a stream of popular or relevant content, tailored to the individual viewing it based on numerous factors, including the popularity of the content within the community, based on views, replies and likes or some other measurement and content that has been interacted with by community members that they have chosen to “friend” or “follow.”