What do you want the forum to be about? What script will you use? What is your budget? You need to give more detail.
I have found that the best way to tackle this concept is to have an interest or passion and then build a forum from that. It is very much an uphill struggle if you try to do things the other way round, ie: decide you want a forum and try to develop an interest from it.
By using promotion techniques, one of them being the very powerful word of mouth technique, refer friends and relatives, try to encourage users to join the discussions. Be creative
and also use good software, i prefer vb. its new version soon avail with greatest social networking script.
I've owned a moderately successful forum for 2 years now. Here's what I can tell you. 1. Do a forum on something you know a lot about. If you know nothing about cars don't start a car forum. If you're into basket weaving start a basket weaving forum. The reason I say this is that you'll have to do a ton of posting in the beginning and no one will stick around or join for that matter a forum that doesn't have quality info. You need to be the expert because people are coming to the forum for advice or to discuss a topic. 2. Ban douche bag members immediately. It sucks to loose any members in the beginning, but you can't have anyone in the beginning that will compromise your quality. 3. Be on everyday for a few hours a day, everyday for the first few months. It sounds like a lot but it takes a TON of time to populate a forum in beginning. When I started mine I was on for about 4 hours a day everyday. Be ready for that level of work. 4. Contents, contests, and more contests. You don't have to be giving away plasma TVs but you need something. A gift card in the $10 to $50 range is a good start. Reward people for quality posts and for recruiting new members. 5. Buy vB right up front. If you don't have the cash for a full license then consider doing something else. There are countless posts here at DP where people ask "what's the best forum software?" The majority answer ALWAYS is vB. If you go with a free software first and your forum gets some good traffic and it will if you are serious then you will have to convert to vb later which is a pain. 6. Know your hosting company's database limits. I haven't seen too many posts at DP that address this but there are limits to the number of database connections a shared hosting account at GoDaddy will allow (this is probably true with other hosts). What this means is that your forum will easily crash with 100 uniques a day due to the limits they put on database connections. If you are making money with your forum you can't afford to let this happen. Keep an eye on it by talking to your hosting company. (As a side note try to go with a hosting company that has a phone number. Your life will be a lot easier). 7. The standard SEO stuff. Get links from forum signatures, directory submissions, diggs, stumbles etc. Read DP and you'll pick that stuff up. 8. Mods, mods, mods. Not the people (moderators) that help you out, I'm talking about software mods. Once you get your feet wet with your software go and look at all the mods out there that can make your life easier regarding forum SPAM (the spammers will find you in no time), games, administration, speeding up your load times. For vb vbulletin.org is the one stop shop. 9. Backups. I haven't had to restore a forum yet but if I do I am ready. You need to backup your database regularly. There are a ton of horror stories out there of people who lost their entire site for one reason or another and didn't have a db backup. Unlike a static site a forum, which is database driven, cannot just be recoded and designed. If the DB is gone it is gone. Nothing can bring it back and all your quality information is lost. If you were making money with the site kiss future income good bye. I think I made my point. 10. Hire an subject matter expert. I've heard this works but haven't tried it. Some larger forum admins/owners have said that they have bribed experts to post on their forums to get the quality up. If you are starting a fishing forum find some fisherman that would be willing to post on your forum. 11. Make it fun. This is pretty much a zen thing. You'll either get it or you won't. A forum has to be fun and feel like a community. If people don't have a good time while there they won't come back. 12. Do your research. Go to a ton of other forums, ones that are busy and ones that are dead. Look at why they are the way they are. 13. Games. There are a bunch of ways to keep people coming back and that's the name of the game. Use thread games to make people want to come back. 14. Talk to other admins. I've done this in the past. Go to a forum and strike up a conversation with the admins. They might give you some good ideas you haven't thought of. That's a lot to consider but if you are serious about owning a forum be prepared for a ton of work. I hope this helps.
Are you referring to paid moderators or volunteer moderators? In most cases, I would hire an existing user as a moderator, one that wants to help and support the community, one that knows how to handle users that may be a little aggressive. Start your forum yourself, add moderators only if you need them. Thanks, Meti
I totally agree. You'd be surprised how many of your members will be involved in other forums. I the case of mine my best members were also mods on other forums. When I asked them to be mods they were happy to help out. They are so good that I basically do very little to manage the site's day to day posts anymore.
I Prefer You To Use IPB Or VB . . Dont go in search of mods first because the website doesnt need any at the start . . only when the members increase then u can go in search of them ... And Promoting Using SE0 coz its the best and cheap method instead of these advertising ! !
The largest number of forums in one place. For now this will be in terms of forums. Later this will also be in terms of posts.
Don't have too many forums, things will just be confusing and cluttered and that won't attract members