Whilst it may not be certified for production systems this is a widely used and well tested system for making board alterations that can save literally hours of admin time. Do check that MODs come from a trusted source and that they are labelled as being EasyMOD (aka "EM") compatible.
If you are running a smaller forum always set it up to require administrator intervention to enable new users. This may not be possible for larger forums due to excess subscriptions. Either way some of the following might help.
Remove access to memberlist.php. This is often used as a point for spammers to create links to their own pages. This helps the spammers to get more referrals and also to garner higher search engine rankings.
There are a couple of mods that will help here that can be installed via EasyMOD. The mods will either remove access to memberlist.php completely or allow access based on the users credentials.
If you don't want to remove a mod, you can set the page to not be readable except by the page owner (733) using your FTP program or via the Plesk file manager (or other control panel, eg cPanel, depending on your hosting provider.
What it says in the title, done in the general board configuration pages.
As the board grows look out for active members that you can pass on responsibilities too. Give them a little at a time and start before you get bogged down completely. For example you could ask someone to handle just membership requests. Or ask someone to moderate a single sub-forum.
Subscribe to the phpBB users mailing list and keep you board up to date by upgrading.
We would generally not recommend immediate upgrades as they become available. Wait a while and let other users iron out any bumps. Keep an eye on the forums to see if their are major problems with any particular upgrade - especially in relation to any MODs you're using
Of course you keep regular backups of your whole website! You also should use the integrated phpBB backup system to make backups of your forums. You'll usually loose a few hours / days (depending on your backup regime) of forumactivity but it's still better than losing the whole caboodle. The integrated backup is easier than trying to backup from any other system - don't forget the majority of the information is in your database and not in the files under the forum directory!
If you're a member of a group that you're admininstrating a forum for you can help to bolster the community by providing intelligent input. Add new threads occassionally, perhaps about fringe topics. Tell people about recent events you've attended. Provide links, that you've gone back to, from your bookmarks - but not just links from google, everyone can type keywords in to google. All of this will make your forum a better place to be and encourage growth and ownership, not just membership.
Advertise your forum. If it's for a geographical group then post some notices in community areas; stop and chat to people in the pub / club / chip shop / library, etc.. If it's for a dispersed group think about where and how you "meet" - are there annual gatherings that you can advertise at? Magazines or other literature that you can get an advert in. Email lists that you can advertise on - but be careful not to spam them ... email signature based adverts work well here as well as from your regular email application and in blog postings. If you want to grow your forum, its influence and community, then advertising will really help.
