How to start a new forum from scratch?

I am thinking about adding a discussion forum to my website, I have a few questions to ask, which are:

Which forum platform, is a good platform to use, I would like a forum that is nice and clear and easy to use.

How do I get people to write on the forum?

How is the best way to grow the forum quickly?

Are there websites that I could use that would help me promoted my forum?

Any help is appreciated!

 

use any powerfull forum script like vbulletin. install on your site. and first no one come to post your forum. u have to post many post and create thread with fake profiles .. or hire some forum poster. create quality post. then, advertise if you have budget

 

One thing I did a while back was to use a RSS feed to automatically generate new topics for the forum. Here's the link to the mod for the SMF forum system: http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/?mod=624

Of course only source relevant feeds to the forum's topic and the more popular the source the better.

If you look on various forum runner forums you can probably find other forum owners to trade post for post with and if you have some $ to spend there are people on fiverr that will post on your forum too.

If you're attaching this to a blog, route all your comments to threads in your forum, with this in mind make your content stand out SEO wise and your forum will grow organically.

 

If you can leverage your friends to become active on the forum, you will have a good base of users to work with. This is the best case for starting a forum.

If you don't, you will have to consider buying posts. The problem with this is the content. Sometimes, the threads look forced and won't appeal to guests that are deciding whether or not to join the forum.

I think the key to making a forum active is to have one main point that gets people to join. Here, it is Buy and Sell section. When I was younger, I joined video game forums because some offered prizes for points, and you got points per post. I had joined an Anime forum once because they had a cool game that was related to the anime. All of the other forums I had joined I quit because nothing kept me there.

Some people say the hardest part about creating a community is getting it started. Maybe this is true, but keeping it going is also difficult. You can't keep it going, in my experience, without some key aspect that keeps members coming back and making meaningful posts.

 

Hi OP,

Short, Clear, Concise and Effective. Kindly read ...

Forum : Xenforo license (purchase 2nd hand is also decent), avoid PHP Bulletin without SQL Knowledge (required coding knowledge to fix bugs and scripts)

Quality Postings : Proceed to some Paid Postings services, approximate range is 0.12c per quality post (Decent English, Passed Tests) and get the forum start rolling. Usually, these people are thread starters or mixed content reviews.

Pings : Avoid pinging too much, forums are usually in high rankings as massive updates and social mobility are being captured by Search Engines.

Spread Love : If your forum is doing good, proceed to FB, Twitter, Digg etc. and who knows, you may be the next Republic of (Forum Name)

Good Day,
Commoner

 

Hi friend , I don't know about other script but one that best for me and the best thing is that anyone can do it easily ...here is link of site and it's almost 100% free SimpleMachineForum here is the site http://simplemachines.org/ Within hours you're up and running ...So go with that one

 

1. I recommend using commercial forum system: xenforo - http://xenforo.com/community/
That's the best forum software ever. Just use one or two day to learn install, config and administrator.

2. Write good articles about your topic.
3. Share them to social network sites (FB Fan page, Twitter)
4. Make some youtube video and attach them within your posts.
5. Answer your member question rapidly.

 

You can take a look at Vanilla Forums platform as I see nobody mentioned that.

 

Vanilla forums is very buggy, from my experience.

I would stick with PHPBB until you get your feet wet with administering a forum. It's no cake walk, that's for sure.

 

You need a lot of people to help you posting, it is toff shit to get a forum running from scratch! I'm on the 8th year!

 

Starting a forum is very hard, I invested couple hundreds in mine and still need more investment to get good content and eventually receive traffic and members. Will be a tough journey but I won't stop.

 

Use ipb or xenforo(digital point use this)!!!

 

Most of the forums use vbulletin and PHP bulletin board script. First of all try both of them after that you can also try vanilla and xenforo.

But you will find good and attractive theme for vanilla and xenforo as compare to vbulletin and PHPbb.

If you started from the scratch:-
>Create a sub forum min. 10 related to your niche.
>Create no. of fake profile.
>Post one threat from different profile.
>Ask your friends, family members to active participate in that thread. You can also hire freelancer for this purpose.
>After getting few replies, Now share the thread on the social media sites. It encourage genuine users to participate.
>If you have a website you can also use anchor text linking from website posts to the forum threads. It will give traffic and linkjuice for SEO purposes.

Starting a forum from a scratch is not easy as we think, sometimes it takes years.

 

Definitely need to prepared takes years to get some traction unless you like to create fake posts/ fake accounts everyday. The next step is fight with SPAM constantly.

 

mate better option is not to touch forum concept unless u have patience
i have too many forums, they pay less than what u pay for them.

 

Have a look at new forum software that is fast and clean

muut.com
discourse.org

 

Growing a forum takes serious planning, daily monitoring and more. If your forums are quiet, try to at least post quality content yourself which can help you get more search traffic and possibly attract more users.

 

Alone is not possible, you must hire forum posters to get the forum populated a little bit faster.