Starting A New Forum and keeping it alive

These are a few of my recommendations if you are launching a new forum and what you should do to keep it alive.

Today I found a forum that was started almost a year ago. The forum had a total of 27threads 41posts 36members. The most recent thread was one month ago and it was a simple question to the administrator or any active member of the forum and it had not been answered. In fact after looking closer almost half of post had never been answered or replied. If not even the administrator is going to commit time and energy to the forum, why should anybody else. Not a good way to grow a forum community.

When you start a forum, there will not be an Instant community. Sorry vBulletin said there would be. So you begin building your forum with link exchanges, you seo and promote the site, buy some advertising and so on. Maybe a friend or relative may make a post or two to help you get things going. Perhaps you pay someone for some jump start threads or posts.

My advice:
Once you start getting some real new members be sure to be active on the forum. If you are serious about running a successful forum and growing your community Get Involved as the admin, member or maybe hire a staff member. To be successful, the first rule is a quick reply. Now days people are too busy or impatient and with so much information on the internet a new member posting will probably check back the next day for a reply to their thread. If no replies they will probably give up on your forum and move on to another resource for a solution or answer. Do your best to provide your new and existing members with quick replies. The quicker the better.

Inactive forums stay that way without participation. Active forums become more active.;)

good luck with your forum

I have a Moderating Team of 11 and 4 Admin and they are tasked to reply to every post within an hour and also welcomes go down well or a PM ... if you make people feel welcome then they will come back again and you only get a few chances to help people as there are many forums out there ...

Forums dont just create themselves .... I have committed 4 years and am only now sitting back a little ..

End result is 600,000 posts and 12000 Members

im just starting out also, and i do make it my buisness to welcome all new members, and it does be quiet at times but hopefully things will catch up soon.

I have 2 administrators (including me) and 2 moderators. We have 174 members... but only about 40 are active in any sort of capacity. My staff is really good about welcoming new members, seeing that questions get answered, making sure that noone gets ignored on a word games thread, bringing anything that they see as a potention problem to me, etc.
My forum is pretty busy almost all the time, even if it is the same 50 + people posting, lol

How Do I Purchase The Software?

Thanks! That is a good idea!

go to vbulletin.com dude to buy it

I have 36 members, and the most users online was 13 now its like 4 or 5. I have 5 maybe 6 chat administrators, a co- site owner and 2 forum mods, plus all my chat admins are uv forum mods, they are really great on welcoming people to the forums. And all my memebrs try and help out other members aswell. Its ocmming along slowly but surely.

Completely agree. Some forum originators don't even bother to answer member's question. If you don't care about your own forum, who will??

Try to run a few contests and people will continue to tune in.

I have 50 members, A board closed down and sent all their members to me for some reason. I was greatful to get a huge group of people all at once, but after about 20 signed up, now only about 3 of those people actually post. I average about 50 posts a day, and a few of my mods are more talkative than me. But I still suck at bringing in new people, even though the board has only been open for a few weeks.

I have often wondered if I could find a board with a lot of board owners who, like me, do not have many members and want extra members. If I could, I thought it would be cool to do a sorta... swapping of posts. Each board operator signs up to eachothers board, and posts X amount of posts a day on eachothers board. After a while of that, the board would look more "happening" and draw more people in.

I don't know about you, but if I find a board that has very few members, and very few posts I assume it's boring and don't even bother giving it a chance.

Well, if you REALLY want your forum to be active, like up to the point that you'll pay..advertise for it.. or do some forumboosting (man, im not allowed to say this you know)

You are absolutely right Taylor!
But sometimes you can't talk alone,
Personally i don't like forums that the only one who talks is the admin and the moderators...