Your Forum can be a living, breathing, nebulous social being filled with multi-directional conversations. Or a wasteland of shout-outs to no one in particular. Want it to be successful? Get it organized.
To establish an orderly Forum, you will first want to create Categories. Well-defined Categories will help your members find the information they seek and will minimize confusion. The trick is to not overwhelm visitors by the sheer magnitude of Categories, but to separate out a few different homes for discussion, as NYC-based pro makeup artist Lauren Cosenza has done with her Divalicious Blog. She has helped organize the conversations going on in her community by creating categories that she knows her followers and readers will be interested in: Hair, Makeup, Skin, Style, Nails, and WWLD (What would Lauren do). By organizing these conversations Lauren has allowed members to find the topics that are more relevant to them and help them to participate.
In order to add Categories to the Forum on your Ning Network click on the wrench icon to open your Administrative Toolbar. From here, select the Social Site Manager icon. After selecting the “Site & Pages” tab, go ahead and select a Forum type page or create a new Forum type page.
Click on the “Site & Pages” button, then click on the “Social Site Builder” link to access your Social Site Builder. Within the social site builder you first have to make sure you have activated the Forums feature. You do this by adding a page, and choosing Forum as the page type.
Once you select a Forum type page, you can begin adding Categories. You will find the field to add the available Categories for discussion questions at the bottom of this section of the page. You should see a Category field that either prompts you to “Add New” categories or to “View or Edit: existing ones. Go ahead and enter/edit a Category and then hit enter. Once you hit enter the discussion Category will then appear in a grey self-contained box. Now, in order to make sure the Categories you have created will be available be sure to hit save.
Now in order to see the categories that you have created, head to the forum page create a new discussion. While you’re creating this new discussion, you’ll be able to choose a category from the drop-down menu of categories. Now click publish, and your question will be categorized accordingly.
Now when you go back to your Forum you will see the new Category you have created next to all discussions and featured discussions. Note that you may not see all of the Categories that you have created there, because you need to add a discussion to a Category for it to appear. Now your members can see the different Categories of discussions and find exactly what they want and what is relevant to them more easily.