My New Web Site, Lots Of Advice Needed.

[on_way_to_fame]

Hi,
i have decided to launch a new website. the concept is totally new and i have some great long term ideas, but i am having some initial problems, as this is my first web site. Its a competition site for Indian and UK teens and youth. 3 days ago i just started with a little forum, but now i have decided to buy my own domain and space, which i will be registering tomorrow. The forum is located at

http://birminghambar.proboards32.com

I have some idea about the sort of competitions i can launch at the site, but at the moment i don’t have the budget to host a full fledged site as it will need a lot of programming and designing for which i am looking for a partner who knows it. Once the main site is ready, i have great follow up ideas, and it can really kick off from there, but my major problem is getting the first 500 members, and keeping them active at the forum, as i am starting with a little forum only. If they are active and the response is good, and i am not able to find a partner i will still not hesitate in investing some amount, to get the sort of site i want. the site would basically be divided into two kind of teams, all Indian members would form the Indian team and all UK members will form the UK team, each member would get points for doing certain things, such as in competitions and all, taking quizzes and all, and at the end of the month, or week, we will add up the total points of all the members of each region, and the one with more point will win. The team with more members would not be penalized points as this would be an incentive for the other team to get more members from the other region. Now at the moment as i cant launch a fully automatic site, which adds up the points and hosts games, i would like to start with little competitions at the forum, just to build up the number of members, and in the mean time i would get my full fledged site. Now organizing competitions through forum is an extremely difficult idea, and i would love to have suggestions on what type of competitions can i organize through the forum. here’s one example i thought of ---

Lets say we have 200 members from UK and 180 from India and we decide to organize a poetry competition, so members from both the countries would write and leave their poems on the forum, others would be allowed to comment on it, but an expert would give points on the basis of their own judgement. In this case a judge would be an English teacher, residing in Canada, who is a professional poetry writer, so the total number of marks gained by each team, after adding the total marks of each poem, would represent a team’s score.

this is a boring example, and i want something more exciting. any suggestions ??

i also want suggestions on what sort of incentives can i give to the moderators and team leaders, so that they would like to build up their team further ??? i cant give cash.

Any suggestions and criticisms would be greatly appreciated.

You can get in touch with me on msn at monga_ashish@hotmail.com , if you want to discuss this with me, or are interested in being a partner.

Thanks.

[NMNS]

WOW that page hurts my eyes...suggestion number one...change the color...