I stopped using it after a few years because I wanted more control of my content without having to deal with the constant onslaught of forum spammers that were often bypassing the security protections, and I ended up just focusing on the blog format. But I've never forgotten how popular the forum method was.
As of the most recent change to this blog's theme, which I really like, I decided today to bring back some of the forum methodology, but integrating this blog with a forum instead of replacing it with a forum.
It's now completed, in place, and ready to be used. But....
How to deal with forum spammers?
One of the significant challenges bloggers face is fighting spammers, who have ever-increasing levels of sophistication in their methods of attack. This is more prominent with forums. I've had forums over the years where spammers were a huge problem, even just last year with a forum integrated into a blog. It was an experiment, but it didn't work.
I spent more time dealing with spammers on the forum than I did with members of the forum community. It got so bad that I just had to shut it down. It didn't work because of the spam, and no matter what measures I took, the spammers overcame them. The only measure that worked was to not allow automatic membership.
While manually adding members can be tedious and time consuming too, it's nowhere near as time consuming as dealing with spammers and spam. The solution to fight spam is to manually control who gets access to the forum.
As a result, one thing led to another and I decided to make the forums private, to paying members only.
This is the best way I know how to combat spam, to ensure that members are added manually, and only when they subscribe to become a member by paying whatever they want.
Further information about this and how 'pay what you want' works is on the public forum topic, An Introduction.
It's about the value
Free forums are ridden with spam and often useless content generated by people who don't value what they're part of, or what they're able to contribute. When something is free, it has NO VALUE, because no money was exchanged for it. It's worthless.
By having forum membership via a paid subscription, it's going to be of value, and that means members are going to be thoughtful about what they're reading, what they're learning, what they're applying to their life, and what they're contributing.
Paying members will help ensure the forum is of a much higher quality than people who pay nothing.
You'll be a part of a quality community
You won't be alone, and you won't be part of a community that values nothing. You'll instead be part of a like-minded group of people that want to grow, and want to be part of a community that helps and supports each other's growth.
We're all on this journey through life together, and I'm asking you to join this community and be an active member of it. Its success will be helped by you, and in return it will help you find success too.
I want you to be a member
Using the 'pay what you want' model, there's no reason why you can't join in. For a minimum of $1 per month, you get access to a forum that will provide you with content of value, that will help inspire you, and help you learn and grow and achieve success in your life.
Surely that's worth at least $1 a month for you?
You probably spend considerably more than that on coffee every day. One coffee a day (how many a day do you have?) during working hours is about $60 (or more) a month. Think about that when you consider the value of subscribing to The Journey Forum to find ways of improving your life. :)
Read more about it here, and I look forward to you joining in!
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