Starting a forum, what all do I need?

zenBoi

Member
Hello, looking to consult on my ideas with starting this forum. I'm wanting to dive in and really get things going.

So far I'm thinking I need some help with my SEO, graphics, some tune to the theme by the creator if they will.

What else can you guys throw in here?

I've always wanted to own a successful forum, I've been running hosting on this site for over a year with no traffic, started on MyBB, if that says anything about my dedication xP

Check me out at MonetizeMB.com
aka MonetizeMB.net / MonetizeForums.com / MonetizeForums.net

Cheers :)
 
Your site is lacking an SSL cert which will put users off big time since the site isn't secure. Just get a free Let's Encrypt cert. Using the appropriate app, it auto renews too, a true set it and forget it setup.

There's lots of other things that can make or break a forum, including that forums just aren't as popular as they once were, but this is a biggie. Do this before anything else. It's not even difficult.
 
Your site is lacking an SSL cert which will put users off big time since the site isn't secure. Just get a free Let's Encrypt cert. Using the appropriate app, it auto renews too, a true set it and forget it setup.

There's lots of other things that can make or break a forum, including that forums just aren't as popular as they once were, but this is a biggie. Do this before anything else. It's not even difficult.
Okay, I'll work on that tomorrow :)
 
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So far I'm thinking I need some help with my SEO, graphics, some tune to the theme by the creator if they will.
No, no and no.

What else can you guys throw in here?
Content. You have no content on your forum. People will not populate it for you, you have to do it yourself. What is your strategy about that? Most new forums never make it. In order to make it, you have to befriend the Google engine. In order to do that, you have to have content so Uncle Google can crawl it and have them ready for search results. Then people might notice your site and slowly you can build a userbase. After one point now your users will create content for you if the niche has an audience.

I've always wanted to own a successful forum
We all do. That is a very hard task to accomplish.
 
Hardest thing, as @sbj said.. content is king. At first, YOU will be the one creating the content... and it needs to be good content, not fluff or stuff you have obtained elsewhere.

That's one of the reasons my site lay fallow for awhile. I was trying to get a DSLR camera to work with my equipment so I could capture even simple stuff, but had issues and became frustrated. Problem was, I didn't know crap about the telescopes, other than they were expensive, must less the differences between live viewing and doing astrophotography. Once I got more familiar with the equipment and got some equipment actually devoted to astrophotography it worked somewhat better (except Mother Nature isn't playing nicely right now - haven't had a good viewing night in weeks).

But, in the meantime I've gotten involved in some other aspects of AP, like using an RPi for control of your telescope equipment and cameras. I also was invited to post info about my site at a fairly advanced field site.... and have gotten a new user shortly afterwards that has been fairly active... and he has contacted a few of his associates.
BTW, my domain has been active since mid 2018... and I've just now gotten really involved in it. I ran it more as a toy for me... but now I'm actually working to get it off the ground.
 
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Hardest thing, as @sbj said.. content is king. At first, YOU will be the one creating the content...
Very true.

I never expected to have a forum, I just had a website. One day I uploaded a bunch of teaching resources I'd been using asa lecturer, and out of the blue the host informed me traffic had increased so much I needed to upgrade. At the same time the contact form went ballistic, so I started the forum based on that existing traffic. The contact form had a notice:

Please ask your questions on the forum, where both I and other people will reply and you'll probably get the best answers.
 
Very true.

I never expected to have a forum, I just had a website. One day I uploaded a bunch of teaching resources I'd been using asa lecturer, and out of the blue the host informed me traffic had increased so much I needed to upgrade. At the same time the contact form went ballistic, so I started the forum based on that existing traffic. The contact form had a notice:

Please ask your questions on the forum, where both I and other people will reply and you'll probably get the best answers.
You sure are lucky! haha, well deserved I'm sure.

Thank you @Tracy Perry and @sbj

I will do some work on my forum and make a thread in the showcase section soon for more critique.

So far what I'm hearing, I need to find someone with a good fanbase to kind promote my forum. I may plan to seek that out, but will likely try another method first.

Thank you all, please keep the comments coming! :)
 
So far what I'm hearing, I need to find someone with a good fanbase to kind promote my forum. I may plan to seek that out, but will likely try another method first.
That is not what I said but okay.

And why should someone promote your forum unless you pay them to do?

A very similar method of promotion is when you buy ads on Facebook for example. People tested it out and that is very ineffective and only gives you a "spike" for one day or two (the day the promoting is published). It is never worth it to pay for it for small/new boards. Unless you get a free promotion but even then it is only a "spike" for a day. It doesn't build a userbase for you.

You need a constant stream of content for making people to visit and re-visit your site. And trust me, nothing is more offputting then empty boards. Within 3 seconds after realization people will leave your site and won't come back ever.
 
That is not what I said but okay.

And why should someone promote your forum unless you pay them to do?

A very similar method of promotion is when you buy ads on Facebook for example. People tested it out and that is very ineffective and only gives you a "spike" for one day or two (the day the promoting is published). It is never worth it to pay for it for small/new boards. Unless you get a free promotion but even then it is only a "spike" for a day. It doesn't build a userbase for you.

You need a constant stream of content for making people to visit and re-visit your site. And trust me, nothing is more offputting then empty boards. Within 3 seconds after realization people will leave your site and won't come back ever.
Made me laugh when I read that first part earlier, my bad, I've been hearing stories from other people too I think I was replying that part to Tracy's story.

I'll PM you an idea I have. Edit: Would you like to hear it?..
 
No problem. I was just irritated in how you deduced that when nobody said anything about promoting it.

Sure, you can pm me of course but just to be clear, I am not one of those big board owners. That means I don't have super secret insights about how to become super succesful.

Also, for other readers, no idea is good or bad. The only thing what counts it to make sth. happen (the content must start from somewhere anyway). I have seen many people with "big ideas" but they never did it (finished it) because it is either a) expensive or b) very time-consuming.

People don't realize how time-consuming running a forum is, especially when you start from zero. Because like I said, YOU have to provide the content. And for that there is no formula, no equation and no reaction which works for all of us with minimal effort. Everybody needs to determine the needs of the niche and provide it somehow. For example I have never owned a motorbike in my life nor do I have driven one. So if you had a forum for motorbikes, well, I wouldn't know what your target audience is like and what the need in that niche is which you can fill. That is exactly your job as the forum owner to find out and to service it.
 
That is not what I said but okay.

And why should someone promote your forum unless you pay them to do?

A very similar method of promotion is when you buy ads on Facebook for example. People tested it out and that is very ineffective and only gives you a "spike" for one day or two (the day the promoting is published). It is never worth it to pay for it for small/new boards. Unless you get a free promotion but even then it is only a "spike" for a day. It doesn't build a userbase for you.

You need a constant stream of content for making people to visit and re-visit your site. And trust me, nothing is more offputting then empty boards. Within 3 seconds after realization people will leave your site and won't come back ever.
I'd been toying with the idea of Facebook advertising for the longest time, so it's good to know what to expect. One thing that put me off is getting a bunch of trolls registering and causing trouble. At the moment, I have a very small, but dedicated community that's adding quality content. I'd like to gently grow it without disrupting this.

And true, new content is king. When I was the only active user on there, for quite some time, I simply treated the place like a sort of blog and just created new threads there daily to keep the forum fresh with content I thought would be interesting for the NerdZone demographic - and it worked. Besides the odd personal invite, I don't do any other promotion as this is a hobby for me, no commercial interest at all and I'd rather have quality over quantity.
 
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I'll give you guys a "secret" tip.

If you have spare money and you are thinking about buying ads or whatever, there is a way better investment for your coins.

Of course this doesn't work without preparation and without a plan. But if you have the right infrastructure ready, then you can hire from 3rd world countries people who will do "data entry" for you (from sites like fiverr). If you can manage it (communication is a problem) you can build your own wiki, database, gallery, shop or whatever you want to service. The payments are not that exorbitant for you and the guy is happy to have your dollars.

This kind of content is evergreen. Unlike threads which pass away after they leave the 1st page, if you can build a solid database of some sort, people will re-visit your site to check out information. The more expertise information you have, the better. But you need a plan for this to work.

You can also hire people to create threads for you. It will make it look like your forum is active but unless you are lucky this is just temporarily and usually doesn't work and the second you stop paying the people, your forum goes back to its normal dead state (never tried it myself but have seen it fail multiple times). But the "database method" is a constant evergreen content. It will stay there after the paid people leave. But again, you have to supervise it and know what kind of data you want to be collected or entried. Because the other problem is where do you get the data? Again, you need a plan, you need to make a research about your audience and the needs of your audience and service it and find out what you can collect. I can guarantee that this method works since I did it myself. But obviously you will be successful relative to your niche and relative to the size of your target audience. A gaming niche has a target audience of 3 billion people give or take. My niche has 50k-100k at most. Sure, in the gaming niche you also have thousands of thousands of competitors, so it is much harder for you to succeed. In my niche I am the only one right now (doing a non-commercial thing, so it doesn't matter anyway if I have competition or not).

I started in 2018 from zero in a very unpopular niche (like the relevancy to normal people is 0% on average and it is in my native language).
This is how it is right now. Although I was very inactive this year on my own forum, still couldn't finish my projects I planned for years now :S, it is still doing fine. Not happy with user engagement/activity, still trying to figure out a reliable method for that. Ahem, ahem, it would have been nice if XF wouldn't leave us alone with these problems and do something about it by developing the software, but well we have to keep trying at least.

1661252328537.png
 
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"secret" tip
Head cinema and reality are two different things

Hang me almost a month later also still in the discussion. Is eh an exciting and timeless topic!

The plan to open a forum has a certain commonality with the game MONOPOLY - if the good theme places are occupied, it is very difficult to find new niches and has already been clearly mentioned by "sbj".

I also start in this "shark tank" now with a combination forum (Hiking & Biking) in Switzerland - no one expects me anyway, certainly not the competition ;) . The two outdoor disciplines could not be more different - in terms of mutual dislike outdoors in nature. This is the driving force/challenge to bring both groups together on one portal. At least it's worth a 2-3 year try for me and my 61 year old "defiant head" already doesn't allow anything else
:giggle:

I'm since a week with topics empty at the start and will now diligently fill the topics with good content (was also active in the past in the planning and organization of hiking projects). I personally think that it needs a lot of heart and soul and it is unwise if from day 1 on the financial success is in the foreground, which is usually doomed to failure.

I started with my plan, a requirement specification (requirement profile with checklists), including BC/WC scenarios - very important! From the beginning I was of the opinion that a forum can only grow organically ... first sow and then sow again and again and then reap the harvest. While creating the specifications, the movie fragments slowly faded away in my head cinema and gave way to the increasing reality
;)

In a second step I evaluated the suitable software (IPS, XF, WoltLab).

The third step was the implementation - 3 weeks behind schedule.

In the fourth step the start (..a forum is never completely finished anyway, there will be further wishes for adjustments/extensions in the future).

In the next 2 weeks I will start a flyer campaign (in all outdoor areas directly at the mountain train stations, bike rentals, sport stores, hotels etc.) and will distribute the more than 6'000 2-language double-sided flyers (cost converted about 350 USD). If from this already approx. 3.5% returns become firm members that is already a quite small success. In the future I expect about 15-20 fixed hours of work per week to keep the forum going.

For me it is also crucial that after each action and after a certain time the development in the forum is measured, in order to be able to circumnavigate the cliffs as early as possible - anticipatory action. The only thing I'm afraid of is that with time the momentum could be somewhat lost (everyday routine) and I will neglect the forum, which will be quite bad for the forum.

..as they say in the game MONOPOLY? "Back to the start" :eek:


@EdBoi
 

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This about someone starting a new forum. If the OP doesn't have the time to create unique content or afford to pay someone to write it for them. Rss feeds are a great way to import great content. As well as indexing well with google.
 
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