Starting your own Forums

Having been involved in forums as a moderator and forum owner for the last 7 years I have formed my own opinion about the running of forums and their value.

In 2001, I first became a moderator on a forum for persons related to a specific country and the behaviour and in-fighting left a great deal to be desired. The attitude of those who used the forums was bewildering and the outright selfish and inconsiderate manners was appalling to say the least.

Those forums closed down due to the owner of the site simply having enough of the user mentality and what came with it. The experience was invaluable however I did not then put this experience into the development of a set of forums that I started with a ‘partner’. Initially we had a tremendous amount of users from the previous forums join the new forums.

Now before going further what must be discussed is do you really want to start your own forums and why do you want to start your own forums?

If the bottom line is money then it is a long hard and grinding road.

If you want to start the forums so as to have a group of like minded persons together to share a space on the internet then that may be a decent enough reason however make sure you know what the reason for these forums are.

You need to draw up a game plan to what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve those goals.

With Facebook having become more and more popular it is even more difficult these days to start your own forums and make them a success but it is certainly possible.

Due to me having developed a website for running information which has achieved an amount of success I had an example of what to do if you want to create a successful site.

In 2008 this site according to AWstats received 1,200 000 visitors and continues to grow and the incredible aspect of the site was that there were no forums attached, people simply wanted information on a subject that interested them. The bottom line was information.

This site now has forums however it is to discuss the content and training programs which can be found on the site.

The users who come there use the forums to get feedback and further explanation to the data found on the site, I am sure that once the forums become more popular there may be problems however one thing sticks out, you do not have to have busy forums for it to be deemed a success, you want numbers reading your content and then those users who join the forums to ask questions does not have to be a massive amount.

Over time the running forums will be built and there are plans afoot to deliver even more information and features to the users, this is all part of a business structure plan.

Information Information Information is the success to any site, select your topic and provide information on that topic. You control the content and therefore you able to control how your users use your forums, if you do not have a game plan then do not start a set of forums and if you do start your forums with a game plan make sure you as Admin maintain the aspect of control, never allow your users to determine what they want, never relinquish the control and direction over your forums to your userbase.

This is the recipe for disaster, if you going to own forums then realise that it will come with problems in the future and this is part and parcel of the joys of forum ownership and the internet.

Once you on your way with your forums there is the maintenance and control of these forums and there will be future posts regarding this topic but for now I have either inspired you or put you off starting your own forums, if it is the latter then thank me

Oh and those forums I started with the now ex-partner, those were restructured in the hope to have them work on the same module as the running information site, we now have more users reading the content and less users posting on the forums, the numbers reading grows and the admin of the forums without user problems is a joy. One word of advice, beware of using ztmc.

More to follow