Arwen's Realm - a Virtual Community

As if I didn't have enough to do, with starting my college semester and all, I decided to completely redo my forums. I've had my own forums for a number of years, but I keep finding that I make poor choices (this is my 3rd try). Ok, so I didn't know what I was doing at first (and I'm still learning). But my old forums (my 2nd try) have over 200 members, so I must be doing something right.

My old forums were set up as a RPG forum, centering around a specific role-playing game . . . which was the game of Morrowind, and more recently around Oblivion (its sequel). My forums were actually an extension of my Morrowind Journal and then of my Oblivion Journal.

When I first opened my 2nd forums, Morrowind was still popular enough that the forums were very active. But eventually the interest in the game died off (happens with games all the time - Morrowind's interest actually lasted a very long time for a game). Last year the forum got pretty quiet, but I hung on with the Morrowind forum theme, as Oblivion (its sequel) was about to be released. When Oblivion was finally released I just figured that my forums would take off again. But that never happened - Oblivion was a good RPG, but it was a disappointing sequel to Morrowind. Oh, there was some interest for a while, but not enough to get my forums up to speed again.

The other problem was that, even though my 2nd forums were much better than my first ones, they were hosted on a rather obscure site, where the forum software was difficult to work with, and it lacked several key features that I really wanted my forums to have. So I started Goggling hosted forums and I found, what I believe is a really good set up.

The forums are phpbb (a really popular forum software) and are hosted on a pretty new, but fairly active hosted site (and community). This time I moved away from the RPG theme although there is a Gaming Portal (category), which includes a RPG forum. It's just that there's a whole bunch more to these forums this time.

My new forums are called Arwen's Realm - a Virtual Community and they are set up in the format of a town. The current categories (sections) include the Community Center, Media Portal, The Campus, Gaming Portal, and The Park. There's also a members only Chat Room.

If you've been to my old forums, then I think you'll be surprised at how much better the new ones are. The best part (besides all the additional features - like email notification) is that these are so much more flexible. For instance, each member has a choice of the way that the forum looks (the style of the forum), by being able to pick from one of four templates (which are all very different). The other thing is that members must be over 13 years old this time, which will allow us to have more adult (as in serious) discussions (within the rules of the forums, of course). And it's very easy for me to keep these forums evolving, based on the interests of the members.

Anyhoo, I hope you'll stop by and check my new forums out.