General Forums?

[pcheek]

Hey guys, I am from freewebspace.net, a great place, where Jan is an admin! I found this website a while ago from her signature, and have come back a few times, just never registered. I am beginning to dtart up a General Forum with categories for everything. I have no theme, and that seems to be the hardest forum to start. Especially when you have nothing to offer, and nothing to give away in a contest. Are there any tips that you guys might be able to give me that might help me to get some members? Please remember that right now I do not have any money to invest further. Thanks!:)

[Mikey]

General forums are pretty played out. There are many out there, and most of them have failed. Your best bet would be to pick a subject that interests you, where 300+ other forums about the topic don't exist, and create a forum about that topic.

[pcheek]

Thanks for the suggestion, I will try that!

[SoftWareRevue]

Like Mikey said. Just give some thought to what you are interested in and build on that.

Of the "general" forums that you were thinking of starting, which category(s) do you feel you are most interested in?

[pcheek]

Well, I am big on web development, and I am still in school. I might start up a site kind of like FWS and WHT, but for people who are younger, and still in school. Thanks a ton for your input guys! It is really helping!

[Jan]

A lot of the hosts on FWS and WHT are still at school anyway :D Hosting forums are very common, so you might need to look into something else :

Welcome to FU! by the way. :welcome:

[John D]

The more specific you can be the easier it will be to build your forum.

It might not seem like it, but don't think that because you are being more specific for your forum, it will mean there will be less people interested.

The main thing to think about is competition.

I can't say too much about this though with a general webmaster forum ;)
Even though I have something very general, I tried to get a good domain name (You can see it in my sig) and the forum itself has over 1300 members and close to 25,000 posts already so that makes it easier to compete with all the other general webmaster forums.