What do you think makes a forum professional?

Hey,
I'm working on forum that I want to be very professional.

I am setting it for over 18s only (It's not adult related) and I want it to be very mature and professional.

What do you think makes a forum professional?
The design?
The content?
The moderation of the forum?

Let me know your thoughts!

In my opinion:
-You need a good design in order to catch the attention of a viewer and also to show that you put time into the forum
-The content is a must. Try adding some update section to your forum (like w2.isohunt.com) having this update section will show the viewers your devotion to the forum and will help them know what is going on
-Moderation for a over 18 site would not be as much needed but you still need to moderated to make sure there is no unwanted material on your forum.

-Idk if i wanted it to look professional for some reason I would put my pic on the home page saying your current owner/moderator or something haha or somewhere on the page

Eliminating swearing / incorrect use of language is an easy step, especially with all the censoring / word replacement scripts in vBulletin.

Good point I forgot about that (dont own any forums)

Well, first off, delete the 18 or older. It is a really common misconception that anyone that is not an adult, is an immature person. I know many people who are 13-14 who are probably more mature than a person older than 18. So that's first. Also a good clean skin is good. Go for a business like look. Make sure the posters use correct grammar, and make their titles state what they need. Don't have too many forums! This is one of the key importances. If there are too many forums, it will look as if the forums have no one visiting them! Hopefully you are using vBulletin, because when people see that, they see professionalism

I am setting it for over 18s only (It's not adult related) and I want it to be very mature and professional.

What a terrible agest remark! Maturaty is most certainly not an age thing.

Sure, more often than not, twelve year olds are going to "strt tlkin lik dis". But just because your eighteen, it doesn't make you auto-mature I'll have you know. Besides, your getting rid of a whole section of people that would help boost your forums popularity.

The moderators should be the mature ones, you can't just choose a mature audience, there is no stereotypical age that's mature - besides people that can't use computers very well .

Besides, kids can lie, so you may aswell set it to somewhere lower so they don't get annoyed at the age restriction.

Anyway, design? Well the colours need to go with eachother, three main colours usually do the trick. Personally, Blues, whites and greys are often used (Not neccessarily together) and generally look nice with alot of colours.

Content? Well it all depends what your forum is about really.

Back to the mods, firm, friendly, but fair does the trick.

May sound strange coming from an old (relative to those here) fart like me, but lose the age restriction. There are more people in their teens on the web than you can imagine and why would you cheat yourself of their help growing. I am developing a forum that will have a teen specific section just for that reason. Teenagers have enough restrictions anyway.

Moderation is where you need the most maturity.

First of all the members. You need to have respecting and nice members. To have nice and respectful members you need a professional staff.

Lastly the site design is very important to give off a professional feeling(like TF :P )

Like Dray said, primarily the members. Perhaps that is down to the moderation which was on your list but throwing out members who aren't what you're looking for is only half the way there, because if you don't pull in members you want, you will not have any once you throw out those you don't.

Second though, site design. It has to look professional, crisp. Like a fine fine suit. Just like TalkFreelance here. Yes, perhaps the green would make it like a suit for a Lephrachaun - but a suit nonetheless! And a crisp on at that

Then of course content, you have to direct the conversation of your members, presuming you have the first two sorted, to the right conversations through Forum choices and perfect moderation of those choice forums.

The members make a professional forum. I don't believe in limiting the forum to 18+ old members however. You also need a nice design. Just so it's pleasing to the eyes.