Forums you have started . . .

[Aussie Bob]

I thought this would be imformative reading, if Forum owners could answer the following questions and share their experiences.

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

My first real forum was HTTPme's forum.

What forum software did you use?

That was a (*tries to remember :think: ) XMB forum. I had a standard site back then, with the usual "Forum" link. Seemed like the thing to do. I rememeber setting up XMB from my cpanel, and then spending ooodles of time customising it, and becoming familiar with the backend operation. I hacked that thing to bits, and eventually got what I wanted. It was a functional forum, that did the job.

When that forum had around 1,500 posts, I changed over to VB, and built instead of having the site upfront and then the forum in the background, I bought the forum upfront, and that was the site. BTW, I'm pretty sure no other webhost had tried this, but I was convinced the concept of building a webhosting service/product, around a community, would work, although lots said it wouldn't.

Why did you build it?

Adding the "Forum" link, just seemed the in thing to do, as most hosts had them. Trying to build that extra connection to your customer, was the main goal. Building a friendship was the main objective, and letting them know that there's a real person/people behind the hosting brand, was also good for business. I also like to interact with folks online, and a forum provided that outlet for me.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

This is the tough part. Noone really likes a brand new forum with 4 posts by the owner. It's a tad embarrassing to be honest, and turns people away. There's this feel of there's nothing happening here, so getting traction is not a simple task. I asked a few friends if they could signup, and start posting for a while. I think I gave them free hosting in return.

I was involved in a webmaster newsgroup and I think a small bunch of forum members (httpme clients too) came from there. From there I picked up a contact of a webmaster who ran a webmaster ezine, and I offered him free hosting if he could give me an honest review in his ezine. He wrote up a nice review and some of his members became clients and forum members.

From there it just grew, slowly, but it was growing. I think we had around 80 members when XMB was replaced with VB, and basically the forum had to start again, as we couldn't import the existing XMB forum into the new VB forum. So I asked members to signup again, for the new VB forum, and lots did.

What's the toughest part of building a community?

HTTPme was loosly moderated, and a tiny % of posts were deleted/binned. It's a difficult situation when the members of your community are also paying clients, and even more difficult in the hosting business. You walk a fine line there, between moderation, and commercial realities. The toughest part of building the community, was that fine line that had to be walked, when dealing with members, and paying clients.

If someone wanted to vent/complain, then my approach was let them, and not try to contain or control that. Just as long as they're not using profanities, then some venting was fine with me. It's sometimes good to get something off your chest.

Communities are complex beasts, especially with members from many different cultures/religions etc. Trying to harmonise all that, is not simple, and when they're also paying clients, it's all the more challenging. Humanity is messy, and you won't get harmony and perfection in such a batch.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

It's the personal interaction with your members/clients, that I found most rewarding. Sharing and building friendships is also very rewarding. If someone needs help, then the community helps them. I viewed HTTPme as a community where folks could come and interact with. In my mind's eye, I see the community like this big energy ball, hovering in the air, and then all the members plugging themselves into that, from all different directions. They could give and they could take. The more you give, the more you get in return.

Summing up

Building a community is a huge deal, and hard to get off the ground, and complicated to properly administer. Interestingly enough, I'm now building Dotable's community, and to be honest, it hasn't gained traction, and is idle. I've got a few things that I can do yet, so all hope is not lost. I guess that's another reason why I felt the need to enroll at Forum University. :D

Hope the above information can help someone, and I do hope that other forum owners share their experiences too. :dancin:

[Tyler]

This could get interesting Bob :)

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

CbtTechs, still the only forum today that I've built from the ground.

What forum software did you use?

Having the thought of a forum sprung up on me instantly, was quite an experience. As I didn't even have a Paypal account back then, I of course choose phpBB. phpBB did its jobs with a few additional mods.

But with mod authors who don't understand security opened a hole up for our forum. This was executed by a kid/man who went by the name of "The Man in White". He was not your traditional hacker, hack then leave. He kept toying with us, over and over. I think he had a blast doing it. It would bad getting woke up, only to find your forum saying go "f*** yourself" all over it. He would change members signatures, forum descriptions etc...

He never meant to destroy the data, just make fools out of us all. About 2 weeks of this, we upgraded to vB. Today, we have never heard of him again, as we believe found who he was. A bit of an ironic turn, but that's for the later :P

Today, without a doubt in my mind, vB is the best for us. I don't see us changing anytime soon unless something goes awry :)

Why did you build it?

There really is no "quick answer" to the question. All of my original members came from a forum on a similar topic. We loved it there, it wasn't active with regulars but there was a lot of new members. Well, even the few regulars there was, we all became close almost instantly. But, we hated it there. We was friends, and in the end, that's all I did there anymore. Was talk with my friends and stopped helping others. The administrator there was horrid, he was in for the money (still is today). You have about 3 huge ads on each page, and about ~3 popups every 12 hours.

There are always "the most respected" member on a forum. Well him and I got talking about how much better the forum can be. and well, him and I ended up opening the forum which we now call CbtTechs.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

Building off the story I've stopped at...:P

While I was setting the forum up, I've always been the savvier one when it came to forums as I've been a webmaster for many years, he was PMing our friends over on the other forum. Telling them what we have done. They were of course ecstatic that we have done this. Soon, everyone knew about it. Since there was less people, and just us, no ads etc...I can honestly say we all loved it.

We all kept posting, and soon, some member stuck around at our forums others went "there". I never really returned as I disliked the forum, and eventually I "resigned" as much as you can from a forum with no powers. Well, these members kept posting, and with our link in their signatures and problems not going well over there, they started asking questions over here. And eventually....Google, Yahoo, etc. spidered us, and people would Google that problem...and poof there we were.

Today, we are still doing the same thing. With a few more regulars, (minus some of the old), but we still have the basic foundation of members that help others.

"Tell a friend program" really did wonders for us in the long run. Please one, get a few more.


What's the toughest part of building a community?

Today. I know how most say the hardest part was the beginning, but its the opposite for me. Back then, we was having over 200 posts a day. We were doing great, but we needed a change. Some stop visiting and the such and it became rather dead. Well, it never regained itself from back then. We get about 1-2 new users a day, and about 15 new posts a day. Nothing great like it used to be. I've tried everything really...new functionality, contests etc.. Nothing seems to really help much, I hope one day we'll be doing as good as we once was at the beginning.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

Friendship. Although, with any forum friendship will come. But I think its a great ability that I can say most of my member's first and last name, location. It just builds many friendship. And who doesn't want more friends? :angel:

I always love it when you help a user who has been to over 3 forums and none of them can help. I just love that feeling, makes you feel like you really are doing a great thing. But there are of course the impatient members who then you just want to press the delete key ;)

Summing up

Best choice I've made in awhile, no matter how small income may be, no matter how sometimes you wonder how much smaller and inactive forums have more members or posts then you. Then at times it can be frustrating.

Would I do it again?

Absolutely.

Thanks again Bob! :fairy:

[Mikey]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?
AForum.us, PostWhatever.com

What forum software did you use?
Invision Board, My Own.

Why did you build it?
An available domain, A wacky idea.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?
Spammed friends, Included link in my signature on forums i visit.

What's the toughest part of building a community?
Nothing hard about aforum, Never cared about it. Still don't care about it. PostWhatever, Making sure it was stable in browsers, making sure it's secure.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?
Attention :)

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

I've done a lot of forums, mostly all for coding projects.

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?
Open Concepts Bulletin Board (http://ocbb.montecarlohosting.net)
phpBB-php5 (http://phpbb-php5mod.sourceforge.net)
The other board is abandoned and filled with porn spam that I'm not motivated to remove, so no linky for now ;)

What forum software did you use?
phpBB or OCbb...I've always liked phpBB, until I started OCbb as a fork from phpBB. I customized it often to my liking -- pre-made MODs were often ignored with the phpBB boards.

Why did you build it?
The two cited: software needs support. The others were general chat boards that died and morphed several times -- the "because I can" variety.

How did you get the forum off the ground?
If the project succeeds, the forum does, and the converse is true. The chat boards didn't succeed because there are too many million of them. You probably need to localize those.

What's the toughest part of building a community?
Getting people to join and talk.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?
The most rewarding part of anything is success.

[Floris]

The vBulletin Fans Network

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

My first real forum was the 'open forum' @ http://www.creations.nl/ A very offtopic open forum for discussing everything and nothing and everything again. This forum slowly grew towards vBulletin topics and we moved to vBulletin.nl and from there we split the styles into vbulletin-styles.com and the dutch language grew into vbulletin-netherlands.com which later on became vbulletin-languages.com and recently we've started with vbulletin-tutorials.com but they're all powered through the main vbulletin fan web site vbulletin-fans.com .. We're closing in on the 10,000th member registration and have recently went through the 100,000 post count barriere, so we're slowly growing.

What forum software did you use?

From tForum (5 months) to Blazeboard (3 months), through phpBB (1 month) and IPB (2 days) to finally vBulletin (ever since)

Why did you build it?

I had my own web design company and after that I wanted to have a community .. that's it ;) Chat with friends and family like I do on IRC, but with public logged conversations.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

With a lot of love and stress and beating little stuffed animals. No, just kidding. :p

Just went with the flow. I put a site online and watched it grow. And helped here and there to get into a direction we feel comfortable with.

What's the toughest part of building a community?

Finding the right formular which provokes visitors to turn into members, who turn into regulars, which generate active content which makes it easier for visitors that surf the net to find our site (to create a selfsustained cycle)

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

New friends.

Summing up

Come to my forums :)

[KimmiKat]

KimsWeb Cell Block/TN Talk Forums

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

The first forum I built from scratch was on DelphiForums. Due to all the limitations and fees, I left there and started KimsWeb. It originally used IkonBoard since the server it was on didn't have php. After moving to a different host, I converted to IPB and started fresh. I ran with that for some time until early 2004 when I migrated to vB. In late 04 I merged with another forum and the site was renamed TN Talk.

There's also a couple other forums, which also use vB. One is called Draggin' Bytes, which was a parenting forum started by me and my former co-admin Sylvia. After a short time and lack of time from Sylvia, it fell flat. She decided to bail and my cousin has offered to do something with it. Hopefully he'll have some luck. The 3rd board was originally another board for people in California chat, but after a short time I closed it and it's now used as a "test" forum until I find a topic for it. But now back to my current board...

What forum software did you use?

Originally on Delphiforums, Ikonboard, IPB and currently vB.

Why did you build it?

Why not. I wanted a place where people could chat.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

It got off the ground really slowly. At that time the forum was known as KimsWeb Cell Block. Even after I migrated to vB, it was still slow. It did get some action when I offered a section to a friend who owns a small webhost in Canada to keep customers updated while he moved his box from Canada to a datacentre in southern Californa. At the end of 2004 I was planning to shut down the forum and move on.

In Novemeber of 2004 another forum called TN Talk, which I was a member of shut down and the members were "lost." When I contacted the owner, he decided to close the forum since his leased license was about to expire and he didn't want to renew it as now having enough time to devote to it. So I redid my mboard with the same sub-forums he had and invited the members over to my board, he also put a link to my board as well. Shortly after that he gave me the former board's domain and changed the name to TN Talk and retired the old name "Kimsweb," although the old domain still forwards you to the current site.

What's the toughest part of building a community?

Finding the right members. Most of my members are great, but we always have a few when they have a bad day, they'll cause the reported post feature to go in hyperdrive. Many problems subsided when I set up member guidelines using the rules from WHT as a guideline since many of those could apply at my mboard too.

Finding the right moderators was also a challange. Most of them were mods on the old forum the members came from. One of the especially, named Seamus, is wonderful and is friendly, but firm. He take no sides and is very helpful on many things. He's like our version of Jan! :)

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

The inter-action of the different members. Since the "merge" the forum has grown and we get many compliments. Even the owner of the old board we merged with visits. He loves just posting as a regular member and not worry about the admin side of it.

Running an mboard is not easy as it seems. 90 percent of the times it's a joy, but it seems about once a month, some things will flare up and you'll be putting out fires like a cat burying it's output.

Summing up

Running a forum can be fun!

[adb22791]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

My first real forum was/is my GamingUltimate.net forum. I am opening up a new one very very soon though, which I am very excited about, as it a stand-alone forum.

What forum software did you use?

Well GamingUltimate went through alot heh. It started with phpBB 2.0.x, then after a b0rked upgrade went to SMF (to try and save the databases). Unfortunatly SMF still brought up tons of errors, and was not very nice looking at the time (my mods didnt like it). I then switched back to phpBB for a few months, then bought my first vb license. I liked it so much, I bought a second licenses 1 month later.

Why did you build it?

For fun mainly, and becuase it was something to add to my website. I also wanted to experiment with phpBB.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

Lots of work, and recruiting of mods. I still don't have many active members, but I do have some. Right now the site has just come back from a very long period of downtime (for upgrades) and the game servers (main attaction) are still down, so I have to work more to get more members. Google Spiders and MSN Bots have been attacking me alot though, so I'm happy (they like vb alot more than phpBB for some reason).

What's the toughest part of building a community?

Getting users! A community is easy to build, but an active community takes time and patience.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

Seeing people actually post. It gives me some satisfaction that somebody has found my forum and taken the time out of their lives to make one post, even if it is one word.

Summing up

If I had to do it all over again, I definatly would (but I would do my site a little differently!).

[linux-tech]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

I wouldn't call them forums, at least the two I've built up, but communities. Wylde Fans (http://www.wyldefans.net) and RCPM (http://www.rcpm.us). At one time, I had Hosting Talk (http://www.hosting-talk.com) going, and am in the process of getting that back running as well.


What forum software did you use?

For the first two, a highly modified php-nuke setup is used to manage (legal) mp3s, images, galleries, torrents, etc. For the last, VB was (and is) used.


Why did you build it?

Inspiration came to me one night after an RCPM (http://www.azpeacemakers.com) show (not my site there) at a bar. They did a great set. A friend of mine had some bootlegs of shows, and we contacted their webmaster to investigate legality of all of it.

The second one came after the success of the first one, trying to promote another one of my favorite musicians (http://www.zakkwylde.com).Again, everything was checked out and updated so's to be completely legal.

Hosting talk has always been a project and idea of mine. Eventually I'll get it off the ground properly ;)


How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

The first two were easy. I had stuff that everyone else wanted. Not a lot of "forum" activity, but a LOT of music/streaming activity pours through those. The forums were just an added bonus to the setup ;)

Last one? Not sure yet, I'm still working on getting it officially re-launched ;)


What's the toughest part of building a community?

Dealing with the critics! They'll always be there, and in the case of the first two, I've been tossed up and down quite a bit due to individuals and unrealistic demands.


What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

Dealing with the fans. Every time the first band comes around (3-4 times a year now, YAY), I go to shows, and the fans are just great. They find out who I am and they're even greater, because I'm out tryin to push the band's stuff too ;).


Summing up

I wish at times that there were more hours in the day, too much stuff to do, not enough time, but I love doing the stuff I do ;)

[Webmaster7]

Forum Name:
Descobre Digital (previously called GuiadoPC)

Forum Software:
phpBB

Why did you built it?
Because I wanted to create a tech community in portuguese language, open to everyone who wanted to share knowledge.

How did you get the forum off the ground?
I started posting alone, what I knew, some news, tutorials, etc. Then came a friend, who did the same. Then we got picked by search engines, and mouth to mouth publicity worked great also. Now we are 2150 members, and I still didn't advertise it! I always say I'm going to do it next week :)

What's the toughest part of building a community?
Getting people to write!!! My forum is free, and you don't need to register to see what is written there. So I don't know why people register and never writes one post! They just want to learn, not to share what they know too :(

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?
The sensation that you are giving something, and providing a place where others can do the same.
When we see that we really helped someone who was in trouble, we really become happy.

Summing up
Building a community is really hard. We get some members who really want to help, but if the rest of the community doesn't contribute, everyone becomes less willing to write.
Fortunately "my" community never attracted trouble makers. Everything is really peaceful :)


Wow, I think this was the longest first post I made when I arrived at a new forum.

By the way, my name is Nuno Oliveira :)

[SoftWareRevue]

. . .
By the way, my name is Nuno Oliveira :)Hello Nuno Oliveira! :wavey:

Nice first post. :)

You might want to further your introduction in our Introductions forum (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/f-introductions-6.html).

[Webmaster7]

Introduction made :) It's nice to see so much known "names" together in one forum. I just arrived at this post, and didn't even read all threads in here. I have to go check them :)

[Manifest]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

Four Closure Forums (http://forums.four-closure.com)

What forum software did you use?

I used Invision Power Board 2.0 Trial. The main reason for this is that it's the only legally free version and that i've used it many times before now.

Why did you build it?

I had a burst of creativity a few days ago and decided to buy a domain name, some hosting and just build a website. Besides, i'd found a few mods for IPB 2.0 that I wanted to try out.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

Well, seeing as the board is around 3-4 days old I haven't got any members yet. However, once I pick on a subject, I have several routes I know I can take to help get it off the ground. And FU is helping even more! :banana:

What's the toughest part of building a community?

Speaking from experience with an older board I had I have to say it's managing the 'bad' members. Every community has them, and I felt I dealt with mine in as best a way as I could by setting up a team of moderators that didn't take sh*t from anyone! :uzi:

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

For me the most rewarding part of building a community was when I woke up in the morning and checked the forums... I loved the thought that people were taking time out of their lives and actually posting and using something that I had created. That's the kick I get out of it. :guitar:

Summing up

Building a community takes time, effort and plenty of thought into the subject. It you set it up right and the member's flock in then prepare to congratulate yourself. You've done well. :)

[Scott]

Welcome Manifest! :wavey:

Feel free to introduce yourself (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/forumdisplay.php?f=6) to the crowd.

Good luck with your forum, you're welcome to get it reviewed (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/forumdisplay.php?f=26) if you want. ;)

[Manifest]

Welcome Manifest! :wavey:

Feel free to introduce yourself (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/forumdisplay.php?f=6) to the crowd.

Good luck with your forum, you're welcome to get it reviewed (http://www.forumuniversity.com/campus/forumdisplay.php?f=26) if you want. ;)

Thanks for the tips. I'll be sure to follow them.

[intelliot]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?

GoogleCommunity (http://www.googlecommunity.com)

What forum software did you use?

I started with phpBB2, maybe 2.0.6 or so. It was the latest version of phpBB at the time.

Around the end of 2006/beginning 2007 I switched over to vB in hopes that it would help me deal with the huge spam problem (phpBB had pitiful spam fighting tools). It helped a little, but not as much as I'd hoped. Still a vast majority of spam is manually moderated.

Why did you build it?

I've been a fan of Google since I first started using them around 2001 or so. I'm also technically minded, I love technology, and I always like to play with the latest web gizmos.

On April 1, 2004, Google released Gmail, promising 1 GB email space for everyone. Which, if you don't remember, was a revolution at the time. Microsoft was still offering something like 2 MB, and Yahoo! about 10 MB. Even paid email providers were in the < 1 GB range.

I knew this was big, so exactly one month after Gmail-- May 1, 2004-- I started GoogleCommunity.

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate?

I operated a couple of big forum hosting services, so I put a link in the footer to my new site.

Also, I wrote a PHP PageRank Script (http://www.googlecommunity.com/scripts/google-pagerank.php) which, for some time, was ranked #1 in Google for that term. Those were exactly the kind of folks I wanted in my forum :)

I also did the standard traffic generation techniques: submitted to directories, linked from my other sites, created affiliate partnerships with related sites, posted a lot in the forum myself, told my friends about it, dabbled a little in PPC, and so forth.

One nice thing is that I somehow got listed in DMOZ. I'm not completely sure, but I seem to remember a couple of my more enthusiastic members helped me out by submitting it :)

My timing was also perfect. There was a lot of buzz around Gmail, and people were searching all over for Gmail invites. Then there was Orkut, and everyone wanted Orkut invites (I personally invited ~400 people to Orkut via GC). Then there was the Google IPO, and in hardly any time at all its stock went from $85 to $200+. There was a lot of excitement around that, though I'm not an investor :)

In the early days, I had something I dubbed "GC Cash", which I imagine is like the Casino Cash here.

Another extremely important thing I had in the early days was a good and passionate moderator team. I found them by asking for helpers in other forums. That's really the best place to look, because people on other forums are already experienced with the "forum" culture, and they know how to do their jobs well. Unfortunately, as I ran out of time to work on the site, the moderators slowly dropped away as well. But I'm excited to re-invigorate the Community with a new team in the coming weeks. (Obviously, I want to improve things, which is why I'm now here on FU :) )

What's the toughest part of building a community?

Spam. Dealing with posts which are right on the borderline of low quality and spam, and the members who post them.

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?

Experience. Nothing can replace the insights and first-hand realizations that building a community provides.

Dealing with the technical challenges is also rewarding, because it's so easy and yet so hard at the same time. It's trivial to make a simple change, but the ramifications on all of your users can be tremendous.

[Xaurora]

What is the name of the forum/s that you've built from scratch?
bidonhosting.com and xaurora.com/forums

What forum software did you use?
Invision Board

Why did you build it?
bidonhosting sprang from an idea, and xaurora was for company forums

How did you get the forum off the ground? How did you get members to participate? I use 2 site to get it off the ground.

1. is http://www.linkreferral.com/adwel.pl

2. is http://www.merchantcircle.com/corporate/

What's the toughest part of building a community?
Installing the forums right. lol

What's the most rewarding part of building a community?
helping people out.. :talk2: