Mistakes made while starting a forum

[Swastik]

Forums, in any niche, are very hard to start off, get traffic, convert into registrations and monetize it. You will see many forums start and close 1 month later. The authorities will put the silly reason that they could not afford running the forum. Actually they do some mistakes, which I am writing here in the post :

1) Loss of admin activity - Administrators are themselves “hyper-active” in the first few days but the passion is lost afterwards. That’s not good from any point of view.

2) Forum takes time to take off -People do not realize that a forum will take time to start off, and run smoothly. No one, except your friends, will come to join you in the first few weeks. Its a bitter yet true fact.

3) Admin should have sound knowledge of the topic - When members ask for help in any field and they do not get it, they normally tend to leave the forum and that’s why administrators should have a very good knowledge in whatever niche they start a forum.

4) No more traditional forums - Administrators dont care about the “over-saturation” of the forum world. Without a brilliant idea, another webmaster forum would not undertake DigitalPoint overnight. Even if it is a brilliant idea, it will take considerable amount of time.

5) Is your forum really a community? - A forum, A community, A chit-chat place are completely different. When a forum is started, it is just a forum. After some days most of the forums, if not all, convert into a chit-chat place with no “real discussions” going on. A very few who really become a community achieve the success.


I do not intend to discourage anyone. Infact, I strongly encourage you to continue if you want. But these are some points which should help you in the long run. If you avoid doing those mistakes, I am quite sure, you will build up a great ‘community’.






SWASTIK

[Kushagra93]

Nice tips

some of the points are really true

[glengainer]

Add this one

6) Starting a forum in a "off season" - Do not start a winter sports forum in the summer or start a math forum (www.math.info.tm) the week school ends (Like I did )

[JCarl95]

Nice tips: Number one is the easiest one to make as a lot of the work can be tedious and a little boring after the novelty wears off.

[zuly]

Yeah thees are all true, i especially agree with the rule number 3 thats why i am waiting to gain more knowledge about this and that before i start anything serious.
@glengainer is also right, if you are starting in the summer, there will be less people on the net cause a lot of people are on holidays.

[pojr]

Some people like me simply have no idea what their site should be out. My site's just a bunch of pages with forums.

[Shadab]

7) Creating too many Sub-Forums

Creating way too many sub-forums and sections of the Forum right from the start.
Start small and then scale up as the need arises.

8) Not using the right Forum Software

If you have the necessary funds to invest (yes, think of it as an investment),
buy vBulletin for your forum. Period.

[shkhanal]

very informative. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences.

[bluehannah]

A forum is really hard to maintain especially if you have other projects on hand. An admin must be fully dedicated to run it so he can devote most of his time and also to prevent spammers that will ruin the atmosphere of your forum.