I recommend stay away from it. DP is best on net. and use dp, explore it and then try any other niche, you will get success. webmaster may just signup on your forum for signature links, nothing else. If you want successful webmaster forum, then you must have moderators inline. they post and moderate.
Establishing a forum is a long term work. Have patience, do continuous posting with some quality posts. Hire few permanent poster. There are lots of webmaster forums, so you will have to work hard.
I will agree there are a lot webmasters forums and you're going need too much work, good posts and advertising
So whenever there is already competition established then you think he should try something else? That's not a formula for success. There were webmaster forums long before DP and it didn't stop Shawn. What does concern me is that imho to run a webmaster forum you have to be a webmaster. Just asking the question on how to start shows me you aren't a webmaster. I suggest you find something you consider yourself an expert in or very knowledgable.
I did not stop him, i also give advice how to work on it. Thing is that is hard to get over it. Much more time need and must have patient. and there are many other niches those are easy to do. Peace.
By all means, start your forum. But, keep in mind that building a forum is a tough process. Get ready to spend around a year working on this project before you start to get traffic. Running a forum is a lot harder then people think. There are the drama kings and queens, security updates, patches, modifications, sever problems database backups,,,,, the list goes on and on. A lot of people are not prepared for what a forum requires and they will give up within the first 6 months. Out of all of the forums that get started, the majority of them will close before their first year. The numbers I have heard are along the 90%+ range. Maybe even as high as 98% of the forums that are opened will close within the first year. Running a forum is like a part time job. Get ready to spend 3, 4, 5 or 6 hours daily either promoting your site, posting in your forum, building backlinks, updates, replying to members questions and complaints,,,,,,,,, With that information in mind, are you really ready for what lies in front of you?
In many cases the answer should be a resounding YES! Why? Because MOST people are not willing to work hard enough at a site to compete with something as colossal as DP, Sitepoint, and others... For those willing to take the long road and get things going, then more power to them... I truly wish them the best! As you are correct, there were webmaster forums before Digital Point. Like there were Search Engines before Google. Google is likely NOT the end of new SE's just as DP is not the end of new Webmaster forums... My advice, if you could afford it, buy out existing webmaster forums, and pool them under a single flag... that can potentially give active members AND content! *shrug*
3-6 hours daily? you must be doing something wrong. I have had a forum for 6 years and i spent about 20 - 25 minutes a day to get it going, of course this doesnt count the 2 hours i spent setting it up.
I would like to know the address. From there lets take the total amount of time online, (in years) and divide that by the total amount of post, members and threads. Heres my site - survivalistboards.com and its been online for 20 months. Threads: 36,643 Posts: 430,172 Members: 10,946 <--- I will hit 11,000 members by this weekend. Active Members: 3,472 Members visiting every 24 hours: 1,204 Lets just go ahead and round my site time to 2 years. Your forum has been online 6 years, which is 3X longer then mine. That means you should have over 100,000 threads, over 1.2 million post and around 32 or 33 thousand members. When I started my site the market was already flooded with forums that had been online for years. In some cases those other forums had been online for 4, 5, 6, even 7 and 8 years by the time I started my site. And now, my site is passing those other guys up. Every 30 days my site has been 10% - 16% growth with around 2.48 million page views monthly. Just because a market is already flooded does not mean that a forum can not succeed. It all depends on the marketing skills, web master skills, SEO skills,,, and several other factors of the forum owner. A lot of it depends on the dedication, knowledge and determination of the forum owner. To make a forum successful, you HAVE to offer something that those other guys didnt. You have to take what someone else failed to do and improve on that. In other words, you have to find the weakness of your competition and exploit it. What did that "other" guy or gal fail to do? What did they not offer their community, what did they fail to do for their membres not to come back. And in that answer lies your strength. Once you find your competitions weakness, you will find your strength. But you have to know "how" to exploit your competitions weakness in order to benefit your community.
~ Kev ~ I would like to say that I live off the grid (I use the computer at a friends house) and I've found your forum and have linked to it at least once! (though I've not made an account). So thanks for doing what you've done! Your advice is good, but I would like to expand on it to say that it's NOT just the Admin of the site that needs to work. A dedicated mod team, and memberbase can mean the difference between success and failure! For help on getting member help, search my posts for STREET TEAM and see what I have to say on the matter (I think it's posted in general marketing, but could be wrong)
Starting a webmaster forum would probably be pretty tough. Just about everyone and their brother has one these days