Small Forum Owners - Look Here!

[Liam.]

So we all know how hard it can be to build an active forum. You may get a few active members early on, but they may leave because you don't have anyone else posting. So lets get around that and merge lots of sites!

I'm looking for as many small forum owners to join this as possible, preferably with forums of 500+ posts each. The new forum will be decided upon by whoever joins (we'll each put some name ideas in then vote on them) and will be a general forum, with thousands of posts on lots of topics, a strong team and we can all put our resources in to one.

No investment needed, just your small forum Of course you'll stay as an admin on the new site.

Anyone in, or want more info?

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

More info please?! 

[Robert.]

Liam, that's a great idea! The only problem my 4000+ post forum is Dutch, but is it possible to merge all boards and add a Dutch board to the forum? If that's possible I'm in

[Liam.]

What more info is there for it ahrasis? Just lots of small forums come together to make a large one

What is your Dutch forum about Zonemaster? Is it just a general dutch forum or on something specific? I suppose since it'll be a fairly large forum, there's no harm in adding more boards to make it multilingual



So far, the forums that have signed up for this total 65,000+ posts

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

Like domain name, database and forum management / privacy etc?

[Liam.]

Considering I've got a number of people signed up, when I stop allowing people to join this little network thing, I'll let each person put a few name ideas in, then we'll all vote for the best one. It's the most logical way I see to do it. The database merge will be tricky or expensive. I'm going to test out a database merge on localhost and if I can't do it, we'll have to outsource, and there are people out there that will do it.

The team would be awkward to sort out since we don't want to end up with 50 admins, we'd all just break the site. I think we're going to have 2/3 project managers who put the most effort in, about the same amount of admins, and everyone else have specific tasks. It'll be a big team, but it'll be a big site to run

[Robert.]

What is your Dutch forum about Zonemaster? Is it just a general dutch forum or on something specific? I suppose since it'll be a fairly large forum, there's no harm in adding more boards to make it multilingual

Actually, it was meant to be a forum games forum, but that's not the subject anymore as the members like to post other things. It's now a general forum, but I hope you don't mind they are quite hyper

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

Good luck then.

[Liam.]

Having a Dutch General Forum is good, how many boards does it have and how many can you push it down to? It doesn't matter if they're hyper so long as you can moderate them (since I don't know Dutch I wouldn't have any idea ^_^).

And thanks I guess Ahrasis.

[Robert.]

@Liam: It has 48 boards, but I can merge them to 1 board with 1/2/3/4 sub-boards I guess

[Liam.]

Yeah, I don't want a dutch board with almost 50 sub boards, that'd be crazy Getting them down to less than 10 would be great.

[Hj Ahmad Rasyid Hj Ismail]

Lol...

[Godmother]

I dont understand the thread. If you are saying what I think you are where small forum owners come together and we vote for one forum to be developed, then I'm in. If this is not the case, then I would appreciate more info,please

[lorth]

so you got a server capable to run a big forum?
who pays it? (will there be ads? if yes, for what?)
where is it located? if you merge like 40-50 forums from all over the world, some people might experience lags.
can you run and secure a server?

also, privacy. who are you and why would someone trust you with the database of his/her forum?

also, who would be willing to loose total control over his/her forum to end up as a moderator for the part of the forum he/she brings in... at best?

what about threads with similar/identical topics? merging? closing all but one? getting a huge forum with 50 "how are you today"-threads?

where can one see which other forums have "signed up" yet to get an idea if the own forum would fit in?

what if admins had installed mods/themes/smileys/own code changes they would like to stay? 20 different laughing smilies? what if some mods dont play well with others? what if people want to bring in pay'd themes? who can mod all used themes to use all installed mods and will they maintain that in the future?


edit:
your website / portfolio is down. the link to your mods in your sig goes to your profile. your twitterfeed is full of ads. not such a good impression IMO.

[Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen]

lorth there makes a number of very good points that I would suggest everyone to stop and think about for a minute, before getting too excited about something like this...

[Bookmama]

It seems like forums would need to have something in common if you want to join them together.
Like if I've got 85 dog lovers who post about 10 dog-related topics and person B has 130 scrapbookers who post on 15 scrapbook topics.  First, it seems like it would be an odd marriage and that my 10 dog topics would still only have 85 people (assuming I don't lose any) who are commenting on them, no?

On the other hand.... it is an idea worth considering that if I go and Google "my_topic forum" and I find some other small ones, maybe their owner would like to join up and collaborate -- so I could send them an email and ask. I could see that working.  Forums are a lot of work and enthusiasm wears out as time marches on.