What's the hardest part about starting a new forum?

[Bawse]

I think a lot of forums owners start new sites without much thought, and not planning how they'll grow their community.

For you, what was the hardest part about starting your forum?

 

[AWS]

Deciding on the topic and domain.

When your communities are in the same niche it's hard to step out of the box to enter another.

 

[Mike30]

Many of us, including myself. We start a forum without much thought. And I am glad it is like that, otherwise one would get
action-paralysis.
I believe in progression, things change over time and it takes it's natural course of life.
As mentioned by @AWS, many times the hard part it's just to pick a topic/theme/niche. But hell, shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
What I give more weight is, just start....

Starting a forum, takes hard work and long hours/time. It's better to do something you enjoy doing or it will be easy to quit along the way.

But that same question is the one that help you to grow as an individual and eventually reflected in your community.
What was hard once, it becomes natural and easy with enough practice. So, everything can be hard at the beginning.

 

[JoelR]

shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

This used to be my most favorite quote. So inspiring!

And then I had a friend point out that you also land in the soul crushing black void of space too.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Shoot for the moon but do it strategically haha

 

[Bawse]

Deciding on the topic and domain.

When your communities are in the same niche it's hard to step out of the box to enter another.

I think you should pick a niche you enjoy, regardless of the competition. If you're passionate about the topics you post, you'll add much more value to your forum.

 

[Mike30]

This used to be my most favorite quote. So inspiring!

And then I had a friend point out that you also land in the soul crushing black void of space too.

If you are not prepared to deal with the crushing black void of space, then that would be a problem. I have gone and returned many times to shoot again. It's not as difficult as it looks for inexperienced.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I think you should pick a niche you enjoy, regardless of the competition. If you're passionate about the topics you post, you'll add much more value to your forum.

That's not incorrect

Passion does tend to trump anything else.

The admin niche is pretty saturated but I'm passionate about it so I'm happy with my decision to get into it.

 

[Jason]

It's difficult to get people to post in it and especially to do it for nothing in return. However, I've seen forums where people are posting things enthusiastically and a lot, just like they would probably on social media.

 

[JennyorAlice]

I think a lot of forums owners start new sites without much thought, and not planning how they'll grow their community.

For you, what was the hardest part about starting your forum?

I think this is it.

I've seen some people in the past that have opened a forum with very few replies or none at all. You have to post some activity on your forum if you want to get people to participate. If the admin/owner isn't participating then people are less likely to join your forum and participate themselves.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I've seen some people in the past that have opened a forum with very few replies or none at all. You have to post some activity on your forum if you want to get people to participate. If the admin/owner isn't participating then people are less likely to join your forum and participate themselves.

This is definitely a common mistake among new forum owners.

They create an empty community and wait. Nothing happens. They burn out and quit.

You definitely have to work your butt off in order to make a forum work these days but once it does, it feels so good afterwards knowing that you achieved it.

 

[JoelR]

I'm going to say something here that legacy forum admins haven't learned in over 20 years.

You're probably starting your forum too early.

You must have your own unique audience, your own set of followers, or your own 5 superusers who already engage with you before you should launch your community. If you don't have any of those, you need to go back to rebuilding your followers.

A community should only be launched when you have a sizeable enough audience to make it worthwhile. A forum is a tool that only makes sense once you've hit a certain reach; it is honestly not a tool for every solution.

 

[Tracy]

For you, what was the hardest part about starting your forum?

Determining the niche and then determining if I myself had enough knowledge of that niche to be able to create content for it.
Luckily for my niche, I have been able to document my procession of learning what it involves, so it's not so much based from an experts viewpoint but from someone getting into the field.

A community should only be launched when you have a sizeable enough audience to make it worthwhile. A forum is a tool that only makes sense once you've hit a certain reach; it is honestly not a tool for every solution.

Generally I will agree... but then you have the decrepit old farts like me that are comfortable with forum software and want to start a site in a niche that their current hobby is. They generally aren't concerned with getting tons of posts on their site as they start it for their benefit and if others eventually come to it, cool beans.
I get a LOT of traffic on my site, generally accessing the resources I make available and then the content in my articles and reviews. Posts on the forum? Almost non-existent. But that's OK as far as I'm concerned. My whole purpose of my site is to give me somewhere to post content in a format I am comfortable with, make resources available to others interested in the niche and to also give them a place to actively participate if they choose to.
And I think I've been pretty successful. As for resources, I get a lot of traffic. In fact, for some my site is linked to by others in the niche as the resource to get data.



I'm not comfortable enough with the programming to know if those numbers include ones that have a direct link to the download button or not. I would hope so... but we are talking XenForo and a particular habit of taking the easy (and some would say lazy) way out of coding functionality in.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

For me, the hardest part was always investment. Not in terms of money, but in terms of time and willingness to invest.

I have to think about the forum before I want to invest into it so that I don't lose interest a week after making it.

I've had a few forums I started and never launched because I lost interest.

Now I try to take some time to think about it.

 

[Cpvr]

I think this is it.

I've seen some people in the past that have opened a forum with very few replies or none at all. You have to post some activity on your forum if you want to get people to participate. If the admin/owner isn't participating then people are less likely to join your forum and participate themselves.

That’s the key. You’ll need to do everything in your power to seed your forum from the start. If you can’t do it on your own, consider post exchanges or use content packages to help jumpstart your community.





There’s nothing wrong with using content packages from sites like ForumPromotion, AdminJunkies, Administrata, and others—every forum needs content to attract users.

We all have to start somewhere, and it’s a good idea to seed your forum by any means possible. This is especially true if the content is relevant and unique to your community.

 

[JoelR]

Generally I will agree... but then you have the decrepit old farts like me that are comfortable with forum software and want to start a site in a niche that their current hobby is. They generally aren't concerned with getting tons of posts on their site as they start it for their benefit and if others eventually come to it, cool beans.
I get a LOT of traffic on my site, generally accessing the resources I make available and then the content in my articles and reviews. Posts on the forum? Almost non-existent. But that's OK as far as I'm concerned. My whole purpose of my site is to give me somewhere to post content in a format I am comfortable with, make resources available to others interested in the niche and to also give them a place to actively participate if they choose to.

The way that you use your forum is as a resource directory, which reinforces my point. Your site is more of a resource site first, around which you happen to offer forums.

Starting a true standalone forum solely focused on conversations and engagement is super hard.

 

[Tracy]

Starting a true standalone forum solely focused on conversations and engagement is super hard.

Yep, and why I would not even dream of starting a site now focused entirely on conversations (in other words, a forum only). What is ironic is that there are still so many out there (admins) that think it's the forum itself that makes sites. Then you have developers that appear to have the same mindset and cannot get out of their safety zone of what their past beliefs of what is needed. In todays internet, it sadly takes a lot more than a basic forum to draw traffic. XenAddons does an excellent job of providing extensions that can be used by many XF sites to extend to what makes for a site that can draw traffic easier than simple conversations.
Have some decent discussions on the site, but here is what draws the majority of traffic.



And best of luck on getting a lot of participation even with quality add-ons allowing a well designed method of inputting and displaying it. You get to where you have to depend on a core cadre of content generators on a site.