[Journey] How to Build a Successful Online Forum

[Mark Eternally]

In September of 2023, I began a project to build a single successful online forum community, with as close to zero funding as possible. The total experiment has had costs, but relatively minimal.

After looking at this from as many angles as I could, within reason, I decided to build a small army (maybe a platoon or company) of online forums with the hopes that at least one of them is successful.

As I was not picky on the topics, so long as they are topics in which I consider myself knowledgeable. I do not want to start a forum about laser communications in space when I know mostly nothing about this topic. I would much rather prefer topics to which I can intelligently speak. With this in mind, I made a list of topics I believe I know. This was a rather humbling process. When you are up against brutal honesty face-to-face it is surprising how much we actually do not know, at least this was my case. So, I made my list.

Once I had my list I went domain shopping. I bought at least 6 to 12 domains per topic. This is where all of my monies went, other than hosting.

Armed with topics, and domains, I began to test forum software options. I found that I liked two free forum software solutions, but for different types of forums. I liked Flarum and MyBB. I would have probably gone the XenForo path, but that costs money. Both Flarum and MyBB have fairly active development communities associated with them, and they have a basic feel to them that makes sense. As I mentioned, I learned that these two produce different styles of forums. After using these two package for a while I migrated the forums to phpBB.

Knowing that I would be using either Flarum or MyBB forum software it was time to start launching forums into the wild wild web. That was fairly easy, and as an afterthought I should have kept better notes so I could share with others how to quickly go from zero to public ready forum. By the time I had launched half a dozen forums I was able to get forums up in around an hour. The most time consuming portions of the launches have been graphic design, initial content, and forum structuring (BHW has Marketplace with sub forums, Making Money with subs, et cetera).

With a decent horde of forums out in the wild I had to populate them with posts, as well as finding where their target audiences exist. This was a slow process. I think of it like a large steam locomotive just starting to move. Before it moves there is a lot of work designing the train, building the train, deciding where the track will lead, laying the track, putting all this together, and eventually getting the engines hot enough to generate motion. Well, initially, anyone looking could see the steam but the wheels were not quite moving yet. Once there is motion, it will be gradual, and powerful. (#trainanalogies)

Something worth mentioning is that I am started not monetizing any of these forums. I did test where advertisements could be placed, but I did not executed on that until later. I also explored membership fee options.

I do not know how often I will post here, but the goal is to keep this thread somewhat up to date. Also, I am not keen on sharing analytics data quite yet, mostly because everyone knows what single and double digits look like.

[Rex Mercatus]

You have been at this for over a year now. What are some lessons learned?

[Mark Eternally]

Online Forums require a community. It is easier to get an online forum going if you have a community of people in the so called real world who will be in the forum to get it started. *ehem* Rex, you may need more friends.

Forum software is both the best and the worst aspect of running an online forum. Choosing the right forum software is critical. It dictates how easily, or not, you will manage the forum, add content, change/fix templates/themes/styles, rebuff spammers, and live as pain free a life as possible. If you make the wrong decision, you may be creating more work for yourself.

If you have some funds to throw at a new forum, it could make your life easier. As with a lot of projects, having funding can expand the options and speed up the growth. This is sometimes critical for online forums. If you do not have the funds, you may have to put in more elbow grease.

It is not necessary to do what I did, and start far too many forums with the understanding that most of them would not make it. It is actually fairly easy to find markets where a good solid online forum will do well.