First priority before launching?

What's the first priority for you before you launch and start advertising a forum? For me, I have to design a custom theme, and fill the forum up with some discussions.

 

maybe fill the forum
with fake user

 

Fill the forum with topics, nobody will want to join an empty inactive one.

 

.Razz, you are thinking correctly.

 

Fake users, is soo overrated! Discussions with yourself is crazy!

 

Id buy hosting and a domain first, then install the forum on the host

 

lol .. interesting answer

 

Put in some good threads first.. And if you can, arrange contest for the first few signups or first few people who reach a specific number of posts...that would keep your forum active.

 

This one is a good idea because I was planning to do something like that. I decided to give prize for most referring user but I am using phpbb where there is no option to invite through importing contacts from msn yahoo aol etc and thus I give up because no one is going to invite manually one by one and I think the invitation through importing is not available in any free forum script .... !

 

Hmm, I might look into that. That mod would definitely be popular. "Invitation through importing".

 

It will definitely be popular, as an user tried to make a mod for it due to its demand but he hasn't got success so far. So I am still waiting for any Miracle .. as I need it hardly because through it I can invite my all contacts and can also use refer mod with it to start some quize.

 

I think there is a good news related to invitation through importing mod as few days ago I searched for this function and found a site related to it, suddenly I get the url of that site in my mind, and now I would like to share it with you, I am definitely going to try it, if it works as I want it to be then my major problem regarding my phpbb forum will be solved.

openinviter.com

 

Nice, Open Inviter looks perfect. Definitely going to install this next chance I get. Thanks for sharing.

 

I have installed OpenInviter mod on my forum and used it too, but I am not sure if it sends invitation to everyone or not because when you use hotmail to send mail you can not send a mail to more than 100 recipients and I have more than 100 recipients, so when I send invitation it shows me that the Message is Sent but I can't say for sure whether it reached to more than 100 recipients or not.

you can check it here pakcafe.net/forum/

 

Make sure all SEO is correct. Ensure that all the plugins and addons I want are installed and working. Of course custom theme too.

 

as others said, juice it up and make sure every plugins are installed, because it wudnt look good that you wait for the ppl to join first and then intall plugins etc.