Spanish Real Estate forum - Spanish property - Estate agentsSpanish Real Estate forum - Spanish property - Estate agents

ianpullen · 06-16-2008, 07:48 PM

Hi Richie and Homefinder

I was thinking in terms of the virtual community of this real estate forum rather than the real community of the Costa Blanca.

Is this, Costa Blanca Forums and Information (Powered by Invision Power Board), the forum you were thinking of Homefinder? It's always useful to know of general forums, even when they're in a different area, as many discussions are relevant across all of Spain.

When we first moved, the wife wanted to set up a site here in Extremadura so I treated it as a chance to practice a bit of PHP and set up Extremadura information and forums - the site for English speakers in Extremadura - it gets used a bit though we've neither of us done a thing with it in the last 2 years. I do want to redo it when the time allows and hope I may be able to find an editor from the retired ex-pat community here to manage it. It's never going to be particularly busy and I haven't got your drive, Richie, to promote it, but I do get people saying they find it useful and the hosting cost isn't very much.

Homefinder · 06-17-2008, 12:55 AM

Hi Ian - Funny how things go sometimes!

I was most certainly not referring to La Marina Forum (Powered by Invasion Power Board)

I was talking about the Costa Blanca Forum (Powered by Richie, SREF and vBulletin)

I had a look at your Extremadura information and forums - the site for English speakers in Extremadura The Costa Blanca Forum is very similar, please have a look.
Richie very kindly attached it to SREF and made me the moderator but, if the truth was know he really wanted to get me off the SREF and out of his hair

I had a look at your Forum, in fact you now have a new member "Homefinder". I immediately saw a post that I want to reply to about swimming pool cleaning.
OK if I link to the CBF? We have a beginners article there about this.

I think that you have done quite well, you have a few members. They don't post very often but that is the problem I am having right now.
I am getting no end of interest. People tell me how wonderful it is to have their own forum, such a good idea blah, blah, balh but they wont post. I take them by the hand and make them post, reply to it to get them going - and they don't post.
They get an email alert about my reply and, because they don't come back, they get no more alerts and it all dies a death.

I guess it will happen in the end as a few members will come along with real interest in writing. How was it for you at the beginning, did you have the same problems?

Incidently, the member "Smile" you wrote to is actually joined up with the CBF but posted in this thread. You can't see what she does because she has not yet posted to "Introduce Yourself".
Smile - Come on then, these folks want to get to know you!

Homefinder

ianpullen · 07-02-2008, 07:06 PM

Hi Homefinder

Sorry for apparently blanking you, but I didn't notice an emailed notification following your last post and have only just seen your reply - been tied up with a few things.

As you say, getting people to post on community forums is generally very difficult unless they need something - I'm as bad as anyone else in that regard. It would be nice to develop a stronger community online, but I think as most of the brits in Badajoz are concentrated on a couple of areas, they tend to catch up with their own local groups in the real world and use forums when seeking information they can't get locally. I suspect you face a similar difficulty.

I've got a new site almost ready to launch and only need a couple of days to get it finished, but as the demand is pretty small, it's a pretty low priority and has been sat waiting for some spare time for some 4 months now. When I get around to getting the new site online, I'll try and give it a bit of a push, though I haven't a clue how. Perhaps that'll be a new thread when the time comes.

Homefinder · 07-03-2008, 11:55 AM

I don't think that it is the problem of lack of pepole here in Costa Blanca. We have a very large resident British community and, when you count the visitors (property owners and tourists) it must run into millions.
I seems that lots of people just visit forums to read and hardly ever reply.
I mentioned that I had joined your forum and asked your permission to link to mine and viceversa. What do you think?
I have a interesting post about swimming pool cleaning for beginners, one of your members asked about this and has not yet had a relpy.

Homefinder

ianpullen · 07-05-2008, 12:04 AM

Hi Homefinder

Interesting what you say about achieving good visitor figures but poor conversions, in terms of postings, in relation to those figures. Has focused me thinking about making a forum more user friendly, but obviously there has to be a balance between making posting easy, to encourage visitors to participate, without making it easy for spam to be added to threads.

I'll bear that in mind and will make some changes to the way the forum operates on the new site, whenever I get round to working on it again.

With regard to link exchanging, I've added your forum to our links page at Extremadura information and forums - Favourite links - always useful to have other sites where it's possible to ask general questions that aren't area specific.

Richie · 07-07-2008, 09:34 AM

It is hard getting people to get involved in all online community, like Homefinder has said you have to lead them to it by the hand and try and keep them coming back.

I have tried, I have put my own money into the forum to buy new scripts such as the classifieds section, spend hours and hours cleaning the forum up each week from all the spam, all the upgrades that are required every month for security, tried to do deals with other websites to get free advertising for members, done research to share with members but it doesn't always work.

Homefinder, you are at the very beginning - you need to put the hard work in at the start to get to show people that it is there, believe me it can be extremely frustrating but you just have to keep plugging away.

I would never do a forum again because of the amount of work that is involved when you don't get anything from it, but lets see where you are this time next year with it?

It should be a completely different story should you put the hard work in now.