Webpage Community Generation ...

I know that items such as squishdot and ... umm ... the forum system that AO runs on exist, but I was wondering if anyone had any idea on how to best create a sort of online "community" rather than just a webpage?

I'm horrible at anything graphical, but I've sat on my domain name for almost two years without doing a thing with it (up until a couple days ago, when I put up a site and almost immediately was being scripted against ... unsuccessfully. :) )

Any ideas would be great. What I'd really like to do is set up a community specializing in network security and Cisco products. Just a thought; nothing's really concrete right now.

~N~

"I was wondering if anyone had any idea on how to best create a sort of online "community" rather than just a webpage?"

- Well.. IMO, you should try to get some online friends to join, peopl you've met that have an interest in Cisco and network security. Try to get some advertisements on some security sites and add your page to search engines.

Just an idea..

Remote_Access_

You could always think of starting/joining communities at UseNet, and most chat-serverthingies (ICQ etc) have dedicated communities on a variaty of subjects too... Then there are mailinglists of course, and don't forget about IRC... Simply put, everywhere where people can start or join a discussion on some topic, the could be a community developing....

great,

Newbie communities are great...

one problem with creating an online community is keeping out the rif raf. It seems that any place where people of any level of skill/talent in any area share ideas or knowledge, someone decides to become a trouble maker.

I suppose what you need to do in order to start a good community is to have a reasonable set of "laws"/"rules" which you enforce fairly and evenly. And you probably need someone who is level headed, and not really involved in the community to monitor your forums and logs, and who has the power to ban users who get abusive. Make sure that you are also logging IP addresses of posters, and that your moderator has access to these logs so that the moderator can take some action against disruptive users who change their login names. Of course, with it being so easy to get a different IP address, or even a different ISP, keeping a determined troublemaker away is extremely dificult, but it is possible to keep away most of the non fanatic troublemakers.

IchNiSan