How much subject / content matter do you need to launch?

drathbun

I think this is an interesting concept. Many people seem to launch forums with no thought as to the subject matter. They're operating under the "if I build it they will come" model, and that doesn't seem to work. Without active users, your forum will die a slow (or perhaps quick Smile

) death.

My biggest forum to date is just over 3 years old and has over 11,000 members and nearly 200K posts. But I didn't start in a vacuum... we had a mailing list that was fairly active (3K+ members, up to 100 messages a day) that needed replacing. That mailing list became the target audience for the forum. Within the first two weeks of the forum launch (we had 3 months of development time prior to that to work out kinks) we had over 1,000 members move over from the mailing list. Instant community.

So the question: how do you launch a new community? How do you identify a subject that will be interesting enough, and how do you find users?
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Patrick · Administrator

Hello,

I can get ideas (not just for sites, but anything) at any time. I've hatched ideas in the shower, I've hatched ideas numberous times right when I am about to fall asleep, where I have to get up, turn the light on, write it down, turn the light off and lay back down. I get ideas by looking at domain names, I get ideas by looking for something and not finding it or finding it in a way that I feel I could improve.

Obviously some sort of existing userbase is great. But, you can get a few friends together and get talking and start a community that way. Slow growth can work out fine.
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drathbun · Posted: 9/23/2005, 9:44 am Post subject:

Getting ideas is great. It's the implementation that is the issue. Smile

As an example, do you think that phpbbhacks would be as successful if it were just starting out today? There are plenty of other "hacks" sites, but by being one of the oldest phpbb-related sites around you have a leg up on the competition. Timing helps. Smile

I have sites where the forum is the site, and therefore I feel that you need something there to inspire active community participation. I also have sites where the forum is there only to support the site content, and I'm not as concerned about the membership / posting activity there as the community is not the focus.

I guess this topic was inspired by the number of "how do I get visitors" topics that I see on other boards. It seems like if you identify where the visitors are going to come from first, that the community is going to be easier to build.
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Patrick · Administrator

Timing helps, yep. But, I believe that there is always room for excellence.
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harishankar · Posted: 9/23/2005, 11:10 am Post subject:

Actually mine is a perfect example of a very thriving but slow growing community which formed out of nearly nothing. You don't need instant membership. It can grow slowly over time. Of course it's frustrating at times and needs a lot more work, but I have had a great deal of satisfaction too. Though slow, it's been a very steady growth over a period of time and I'm perfectly satisfied with that. The quality of content has been excellent and the advantage is that it's a lot more manageable this way.

Obviously most people want a fast-growing community. I tend to prefer a small-to-medium sized community with more quality of membership than quantity of activity. That's my belief anyway.
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drathbun · Posted: 9/23/2005, 12:51 pm Post subject:

Fast growing... slow growing... most folks would take either. It's the stagnant boards that get frustrating. And of course there is the "quality versus quantity" argument too. A board with 200 very active members is more interesting than a board with 2000 members, of which 5 are active.
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Teknomancer · Posted: 9/25/2005, 4:19 am Post subject:

dojo · Posted: 9/25/2005, 11:16 am Post subject:

I am the type of person who starts a forum out of the blue. I have recently started one and I am the only poster there, well I have a new member who started posting ..2 messages so far. I have opened 100 threads already in 2 days and will keep the high rate for the next days. I don't create fake accounts, I just create threads. In the end they will come Very Happy

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Teknomancer · Posted: 9/25/2005, 10:51 pm Post subject:

100 threads in 2 days Surprised

Forum activity I feel is mostly based on the subject/topic of the forum. Though it would plain boring to create forums of topics that exist in its millions... I myself am looking for a good topic that interests me the most to create a site/forum.
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~HG~ · Posted: 9/26/2005, 2:59 am Post subject:

You sound a lot like me dojo lol
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